Gossip Central

Steal the Chandeliers: John Oliver at the Museum of the Moving Image Dinner/ Christopher Hitchens Remembered at Cooper Union’s Great Hall

Well, The Daily Show funnyman John Oliver did not exactly recommend stealing the six rather heavy looking, grand crystal chandeliers at the St. Regis Hotel, but he did refer to them a few times, as emblematic of the posh surroundings at the same time that he advised the gown and tuxedo clad crowd to follow the British’s lead when it comes to stocking their museums. “Steal as much as you can. It works for us,” he joked. “Then you won’t have to have a benefit dinner.” Honoring Philippe Dauman, Chief Executive Officer of Viacom, Randy Falco, President and Chief Executive Officer of Univision Communications, and George Kaufman, Chairman of Kaufman Astoria Studios, Mayor Michael Bloomberg included this Museum of the Moving Image event in his rounds, pointing out that the city had 50 ½ million tourists last year: “We are the media capital of the world.” Perhaps keyed to the Queens-based museum’s recent exhibition of Jim Henson’s legacy, he said: I took Kermit to a Yankee game and offered to buy him popcorn. He’s a cheap date. The frog said, I’ll just go out in the field and catch some flies.

Barney Rosset, Richard Seaver, and William Burroughs in Midcentury Paris

Woody Allen may have won this year’s Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his whimsical movie, Midnight in Paris, with its time tripping to the 1920’s when Gertrude Stein held court in her salon. But Paris had another literary heyday in the mid-century when another round of Americans, among them George Plimpton, James Baldwin, Peter Stone, Irwin Shaw, Barney Rosset, Richard Seaver, and the beats hung out. Rosset died last week at age 89, and for those who valued his contribution to upholding first amendment rights in this country, his championing the works of artists, transgressive in subject and language (Beckett, Burroughs, Miller, Lawrence, Genet, Ionesco) the event truly marks the end of an era. People said the same when Dick Seaver died in 2009, but this time we really, really mean it.

Memorable Books of 2011

Languishing on a beach chair in my winter outpost by a turquoise sea, I have only books on my mind, for me the most portable item from before the age of kindle or even a recent dinosaur, the ipod nano. So here are a few that have pleased and provoked:

Jack Kerouac Dissed in Seminar on Broadway

Alan Rickman warned me about this: In his new play at the Golden Theater on Broadway, Seminar by Theresa Rebeck, directed by Sam Gold, Rickman plays a well-established teacher of a private writers’ workshop. He cajoles and humiliates his students, sleeps with them, getting his point across.

Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp, and Me: A Healthy Dose of Disrespect

The fans outlying MoMA for the New York premiere of The Rum Diary were quadruple deep, awaiting the arrival of the star, Johnny Depp. Too bad the Titus I screening room was three quarters filled. Apparently the star did not want a full house. Why? Let's call it the vagaries of stardom. I had met Depp before, before his turn as Jack Sparrow turned him quirky. At the premiere of an earlier film we talked about his double roles in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls (brilliant), and his passion for beat literature. With Hunter S. Thompson, it's guilt by association.

Remembering 9/11: Portraits of Resilience

You could feel the weight of the occasion at the Milk Gallery in the Meatpacking on Thursday night, the site of a portrait exhibition and screening of a documentary marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Not that NYC was lacking in remembrance, but these photographs of key players in the event and after by Marco Grob for Time Magazine's tribute volume, Portraits of Resilience embody ennobling gravitas, the kind of historic moment captured in oils by the great masters.

Hamptons Journal: Enter Laughing and Stay Laughing at Bay Street/ Seriously Bookish to Benefit the East Hampton Library

The revival of Enter Laughing that opened Saturday night at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor had me howling so hard I nearly needed my own reviving. That's because Richard Kind is impossibly funny, and Josh Grisetti matches him zany move for move in the role of David Kolowitz. A cross between PeeWee Herman and Alan Cumming, he's hilarious when he enters laughing, trying out every guffaw, hiccup, chuckle, snort, belly-wrenching hoot in his repertoire.

Neal Cassady Drives Again in Magic Trip

After the American writer Jack Kerouac's On the Road hit the bestseller lists in 1957, its characters were instantly immortalized, but not as fictional creations. Much to the author's horror, they became fodder for the needy mid-century Zeitgeist, heroes of an alternative lifestyle. You can read shy Kerouac's Big Sur, an account of his nervous breakdown, to understand his terror at girls trying to climb into his window to bed him, thinking the sexy guy based on Neal Cassady was really the author. Or, you can see Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood's “archival cinema verite” documentary Magic Trip to see Neal Cassady's next chapter, as the driver of Ken Kesey's bus Further. 

Hamptons Journal: Robert Wilson's Very Merry Un-Birthday

The parties are planned for the fall, at least 4 of them in Milan, Berlin, New York, and Paris, for the internationally famous artist Robert Wilson's 70th birthday. But on Saturday night, he presided over the 18th annual summer benefit for the Byrd Hoffman Watermill Center. Celebrating collaboration in the arts, the extravaganza featured an array of wildly clad actors in outlandish poses and postures, in haute melodrama befitting the theme: Voluptuous Panic; taken together throughout the Center's ample 8 acres, 20 site-specific installations and performances created by young international artists, the Center became a carnival of splendor and silver body paint. You never knew what might come peeking through the trees, or underfoot, as in two heads poking up through the straw ground cover. For all his avant-garde vision, Wilson stays close to the classics: One upcoming premiere, a production of The Odyssey for October, 2012, in Athens.

Allen Ginsberg at the Oscars, at MoMA, at Large .

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.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura