Gossip Central

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

Rendez-vous with French Cinema

Interview with Claude Lelouch ( Beet.TV and Regina Weinreich)

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If you want to understand the French, their President Nicolas Sarkozy and his whirlwind marriage to model Carla Bruni, you need do no more than see their movies. Lincoln Center's Rendez-vous, one of the year's most popular festivals offers 15 films: each whimsical, charming, love obsessed in its own way. Last Friday's opening night belonged to Claude Lelouch's 41st film, “Roman de Gare,” which begins with a rather impossible woman being dumped at a rest stop by her fiancé. Lelouch, whose “A Man and a Woman” was awarded the 1966 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, said in an interview that he witnessed such a scene, and that set off one of his most accomplished screenplays, a thriller in which a famous writer of romances dies. He loves road trips, preferably alone, composing his scripts while he drives, speeding and talking into a tape. Lelouch admires most auteurs, that is, directors such as John Cassavetes and Woody Allen who are not slaves to other people's words.
          Even films with potentially darker themes are love obsessed. Noemie Lvovsky's “Let's Dance” features an elderly Holocaust survivor, a lively man who refuses to age, attends dancing school and falls in love, again, while his wife languishes in dementia and his daughter has vivid nightmares of murdering Hitler. In Cedric Klapisch's “Paris” several story lines of various relationships intertwine as a young man awaits a heart transplant in what can be seen as a love letter to the city, much in the manner of Woody Allen's “Hannah and her Sisters” paying homage to New York's special architecture. Christophe Honore's musical “Love Songs” has a major character's tragic death smack in its center, and yet, her boyfriend develops a new relationship out of his grief.  Ludivine Sagnier and Chiara Mastroianni star with Louis Garrel (so memorable in Bernardo Bertolucci's “The Dreamers”) as Alex Beaupain's score accentuates a ménage-a-trois, among other tender moments. Garrel and Honore, attending the Rendez-vous's luncheon yesterday at Bar Boulud, said they were most surprised at the American Q&A's, that audiences were concerned about sexual orientation: did the characters know they were gay? Were they bi? In France, said Christophe Honore, no one ever questions that.

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

15th Hamptons International Film Festival

With key personnel Denise Kasell and Rajaendra Roy moving on to other enterprises, some were wondering whether or not the Hamptons International Film Festival would meet the fine quality of the past: great films, parties, people. And in fact it has. Located in East Hampton, Montauk, Southampton and Sag Harbor, this festival remains the place to be in mid-October. If one may quibble, the only problem is seeing all the films you want to see. The offerings are that good. My favorites: Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly which was chosen for the festival's Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Prize in Science and Technology and Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, both featured in The New York Film Festival which closed the week before. Despite this honor, Schnabel was a no-show, but last Friday Sidney Lumet, the 83 year old director of such classics as Dog Day Afternoon and Network, conversed at the sold-out Bay Street Theater with writer Adam Green, about his award-filled career and fondness for melodrama.
            Talk about melodrama, Lumet would love Paul Schrader's morality thriller, The Walker, another festival film I sampled, to open in December. At a reception for director Robert Altman at Elaine's following his memorial service in February, the actresses Lily Tomlin and Lauren Bacall had a tete-a-tete about a new film they had just made. Now I know what they were chatting about. These actors join Kristin Scott Thomas as Washington, D.C. socialites often escorted about by their “gay best friend,” Woody Harrelson in a nuanced performance as a bon-vivante suddenly implicated in a murder.
            The quirky Kabluey stars Lisa Kudrow in a distinctly non-Phoebe role as a mother at loose ends awaiting the return of her husband from service in Iraq. Her big-hearted but ne'er-do-well brother-in-law shows up to help. Played by Scott Prendergast (who also directs) in an oversized, warm and fuzzy blue costume, he is hilarious and pathetic on an American highway.
            At a party at Nick & Toni's marking the 40th anniversary of New Line Cinema Kudrow mugged for photos with Amanda Peet, the star of Martian Child, opening this week and also starring John Cusack who was on hand along with painter Eric Fischl, director/actor Bob Balaban, and Raj Roy, now at MOMA, among the New Line well-wishers. Kudrow told me that for independent films, she chooses roles that are far from her Friends persona. While she is excellent in Kabluey opening in 2008, her character is a bit dour and sad. This comic actor laughs in only one scene, clad in bra and undies, when she's having an affair.
                                                  Regina Weinreich

Go Go Tales

Friday night director Abel Ferrara was seen cajoling people on the street near the Walter Reade Theater, begging them to attend the New York Film Festival's midnight screening of his comedy, Go Go Tales, about a downtown club on the decline. “We'll find a place to put your bags,” he pleaded with one passerby referring to the man's rolling suitcase. Handsome in a rugged way with a huge Frankenstein head, Ferrara looks thuggish for a moment, perhaps frightening, and then his face melts into a soft vulnerability. You do not want to say no to him. In the meantime, in the theater's lobby, a cocktail reception was underway. Sylvia Miles, in a top hat, was the hub of activity, photos and chat. Playing the landlord of the go go club, Miles is the only woman in the film wearing clothes (a fake Chanel houndstooth suit and velvet headband); she has the film's best scenes, holding a fire hose in one hilarious moment and as a barfly with a foul mouth; in a stroke of genius, she sings a ditty intoning “bed, bath, and beyond” over the movie's end credits. Willem Dafoe was also on hand, as he was the week before, on the festival's opening night. At Tavern on the Green he escorted guests into the swell schmooze fest as if he were in character, the club's proprietor desperate to keep it alive. Rushing by was a tony crowd-including Leelee Sobieski looking very Hollywood in a slinky gown, directors Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, actors Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jason Schwartzman, Adrian Brody with his mom, photographer Sylvia Plachy-- you just wanted to ask Willem, “Where are the pole dancers?”

                                                                                     Regina Weinreich

45th New York Film Festival

When this, my favorite of all festivals, kicks off this Friday night with Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson's new film, the colors will be all curry, turmeric, saffron and blues. Set in India, this road movie featuring Jason Schwartzman, Adrian Brody, and the much troubled Owen Wilson (see the tabloids on his attempted suicide), is about losing “baggage.” (Those on film were designed by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton and I wish they had cast them off in my direction). It is also about Wes Anderson's preoccupation with family dysfunction (see The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Royal Tenebaums, not to mention Rushmore). Specifically, Anderson is obsessed with irresponsible parenting and its side effects. Three brothers on a train search for mom (Anjelica Huston) after the death of their father. She has not attended the funeral and the boys want to know why. Connecting with this self-absorbed missionary proves elusive, but that does not mean she fails to nurture. One of the film's surprises is how, once these grown men find her in the depths of rural India, they regress to baby behavior, especially in a scene replicating a nursery, like the Darlings at home in Peter Pan. Don't be fooled: the cartoon colors and sight gags belie some serious stuff. Dr. Freud, this one's for you.

             Another kind of doctor prevails in Julian Schnabel's masterpiece The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based upon a book written in the most remarkable of circumstances. The film opens with antique x-rays of bones over the titles ushering us into the “locked-in,” dreamy consciousness of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), a Parisian fashion editor who at age 43 experienced a stroke that left him paralyzed except for the blinking of one eye. With the help of a team of nurses, including Schnabel's wife, Olatz Lopez Garamendia in a hilarious scene showing him how to use his tongue, he learns how to signal the alphabet in eye blinks and thus arduously composes his narrative. Shot in the actual French hospital where Bauby was treated, the film images his post-stroke world: the weight and immobility of the diver in water, the lightness and freedom of the butterfly. The one-eyed point of view was the central conceit of Ron Harwood's adaptation, the Academy Award winning screenwriter (for The Pianist) wrote me in an email, the images embellished by the outsized artist/ director Julian Schnabel. At the festival's press conference, Schnabel revealed that making this film helped him deal with the death of his father Jack, a butcher who died at age 92 in 2004.  On screen, Bauby shaves his father (Max von Sydow) in perhaps the most sensitive father-son scene ever filmed. The candid Schnabel recounted a time when he helped his father in the bath reminding him not to shit in the comforting water, which of course he did. Too much information, and yet, onscreen that tenderness translates to an extraordinary, human scale movie.                                                                                 Regina Weinreich

Gore at Tribeca

There was more than global warming going on inside a black tent within the spacious Winter Garden where the Tribeca Film Festival held its opening night party on Wednesday. Everyone from Al and Tipper Gore to Jon Bon Jovi, Damon Dash and Rachel Roy wondered why we were crammed in; nary a canapé could pass. (The waiters did try.) Outside that tent, lavish hors d’oevres made their rounds; waiters served ginger martinis on trays. Guests could stand or sit in the elegant hall, festooned in marble and palm trees. Then again, inside the sweaty enclosure, it was easy to cozy up to Al Gore still riding high from his Oscar win for An Inconvenient Truth. Just seeing Al gabbing away with his fans sets me dreaming: “if only.” Taking me around for a picture, Al had me braced at the shoulder, his large arm bringing me close. This was the most secure I have felt since 2000. Fox 411’s Roger Friedman looked the big guy in the eye and said, “Here’s my theory, Al: Hilary and Obama will cancel each other out and you will announce your candidacy in the Fall.” Long, long pause. (Oh my God, he wasn’t saying no.) Taking a breath, Gore finally said, “I’m not planning that.”

                Okay. So he’s not planning . . .

                                                                                 Regina Weinreich

Sundance Envy

I have a rare and often misdiagnosed disease: Sundance Envy. The main symptom is celluloid deficiency indicated by breathless longing. Dr. Freud, are you listening? Many of my film critic colleagues attend this premier film festival, getting the scoops on the parties, the celebs, the shwag, the buzz on movies before anyone has seen them! What reporter in her right mind wouldn’t want to be there?

Fortunately I get potent, rehabilitating doses of expert and vivid reportage from Roger Friedman’s Fox 411 column and from The New York Times Carpetbagger David Carr. The news however on the latest films seems mixed: some are even more disturbed than I am. Take, for example, a new movie featuring the graphically filmed rape of the lovely, precocious 12-year-old Dakota Fanning. According to Fox 411, even sicker than the film are the preteen’s parents for allowing her to participate in such exploitation particularly as the scene is gratuitous, the movie bad, and, in a peculiar twist, defended by various anti-rape organizations. As well meaning as these groups may be regarding an issue that is certainly urgent, the cure may be to avoid this movie altogether.

Perhaps we will be spared. As of this writing, no distributor has wanted to touch it. And how about the movie about the vagina with teeth? Well now we veer close to Portnoy! One question: do the biting genitalia belong to anyone’s mother?

Regina Weinreich

Sundance Fim Festival