Gossip Central

Poets Supreme

The National Arts Club was jammed with poets on Tuesday evening, and those were on the walls: images of Auden and Berryman, Ashbery and   Ginsberg and Gertrude Stein for the Portraits of Poets 1910-2010 exhibition. What about off the wall, the 3 hundred or so filling this historic Gramercy Park institution's homey Christmas sitting rooms? A who's who of poets and their photographers: Jill Krementz, Nancy Crampton,Chris Felver among them sat to hear the verse, though soon the seats ran out and the New Yorker poetry editor Alice Quinn urged the standing room crowd to use the floor if necessary. Soon floor space ran out too.

The occasion marked the centennial of the Poetry Society of America with a stellar reading by Richard Howard, Galway Kinnell, Marie Ponsot, Yusef Komunyakaa, and ending withSapphire, the author of Push, the novel on which the movie Precious, sure to be nominated for Best Picture Oscar, is based. Causing a sensation for the level of family dysfunction and abuse, Precious' most egregious figures are the parents.

Sapphire read a Father's Day tribute, “June 17, 2007,” and it was a relief that the poem's father was unlike the father in her novel.

The charismatic beat writers were present in pictures: Bob Kaufman, Anne Waldman, Michael McClure,Patti Smith. One writer, William Burroughs, a poet in his pal Jack Kerouac's praise, will be remembered in a new documentary to be featured at the upcoming Slamdance festival. Talented filmmaker Yony Leyser is asking for eleventh hour help:

See http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/williamburroughs/william-s-burroughs-a-man-within-0upremer

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Photos: Gary Snyder, Amiri Baraka, Anne Waldman courtesy of Chris Felver

Chelsea on the Rocks/ Naked Lunch at 50

Beat era poet Ira Cohen eloquently sets the mood for Abel Ferrara's new movie, Chelsea on the Rocks about the legendary hotel on 23rd Street, reciting his own verse. Ferrara, the downtown filmmaker who recently made Go Go Tales, one of the hits of last year's New York Film Festival, seems to want to mark the end of an era showing how the hotel is turning a corner from being a haven for down and out artists, writers and rock stars, and a locus for anyone coming to town with a yearning for bohemia or just wanting to be hip, to becoming a cash cow for a new set of corporate type owners. Famously, Sex Pistol's Sid Vicious killed Nancy Spungeon there, and then killed himself. What was it like in those glamorous years? Tenants used to say, you didn't want to share an elevator with this pair. They just might fall on you. Including interviews with Dennis Hopper, Raymond Foye, Zev Greenfield and others, the film is more a tableau of a historically rich and hash feuled milieu akin to the Beat Hotel in Paris in the late '50's and early '60's than a traditional documentary. Prior hotelier and art lover Stanley Bard famously gave Ethan Hawke a free room when his marriage to Uma Thurman broke up. The nostalgic mood is, we will never see his like again.

     A photo of William S. Burroughs with Andy Warhol hanging out at the Chelsea is resonant. This marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Burroughs's iconic Naked Lunch. This guru of the beat movement will be feted at St. Mark's Church, New York University, Columbia University and School of Visual Arts., and will feature a group reading by Genesis P. Orridge, John Giorno, and Simon Pettet on Wednesday at St. Mark's Church, a panel of Burroughs influenced writers on Thursday at NYU including Penny Arcade and Jurgen Ploog. On Friday, Columbia University presents an exhibition of manuscripts at Butler Library as well as panels featuring biographer Barry Miles and Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset who first put out the outrageous Naked Lunch in America. On Saturday, at Visual Arts Theater on 23 Street, a film program including the East Coast premiere of the Danish documentary Words of Advice and excerpts from Alan Govenar's Beat Hotel is followed by performers and poets: Anne Waldman, Eric Anderson, and Michael McClure. Saturday Night Live's Hal Willner brings surprise guests to the table, hosted by yours truly. For more information: www.nakedlunch.org.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

PEN World Voices/ Daphne's Depression

What an international mecca New York was last week, with Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda arriving for the premiere of “Still Walking,” for example, or the Irish playwright Conor McPherson in town-(his play “the Seafarer was all the rage on Broadway last season)-- showing “The Eclipse,” both films part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Dovetailing with the film fest, novelists and poets were celebrated at the fifth annual PEN World Voices Festival. The party started on Monday night when the Cultural Services of the French Embassy hosted cocktails and a photo exhibition by Parisian Gerard Rondeau. An extraordinary portrait of Paul Bowles in his last years of life, hit you first as you entered the elegant Fifth Avenue townhouse. Pictures of Susan Sontag, Louise Bourgeoise, Carla Bruni. Joan Mitchell, Gore Vidal were among those gracing the walls. Salman Rushdie was on hand greeting the likes of Mary McFadden (before she sped off across the park to honor Tom Hanks at Lincoln Center). Daniel Menaker spoke about the Israeli writer Meir Shalev he would interview later in the week. We had not heard of him, but that was the point: to meet the writers and discover something new. And that's the way it went: under the title “Evolution/ Revolution,” a group program featured Edwidge Danticat reading from the Haitian poet Felix Moresseur-Leroy, to Quebecoise poet Nicole Brossard, to French Muriel Barbery, to Palestinian Raja Shehadeh imagining smoking a joint with an Israeli border guard; an appreciation of Kafka's “Amerika” with Colm Toibin (he has a new book called “Brooklyn”), Louis Begley, and Lynne Tillman. 

As to great writers: everyone is talking about New Yorker Daphne Merkin's article on her own depression in Sunday's “New York Times Magazine.” In my darkest moments, thoughts of suicide can easily be dispelled by a slice of cheesecake or some healthy retail therapy. Not so Merkin; even the love of her daughter could not rid her of suicidal episodes.  Easy enough to distance oneself from Plath's bell jar. Merkin, a child of wealth and privilege, seemed to have it all. But following “Enchantment,” a novel revelatory on her relationship with her mother, and her many articles riffing on the taboo-on the secret pleasures of being spanked, for example, or the sexual implications of the purse in a piece about the accessory of choice. These mark the writer in risky territory-not a mere journalist of our time, as I had thought-but an artist.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

The Return of Jayne Anne Phillips

The word was out: a new novel by Jayne Anne Phillips had the New York Times critic, Michiko Kakutani, notorious for her acute discerning and dismissive eye, creaming. And so last Friday night, Jayne Anne Phillips' reading/book signing at the CUE gallery in Chelsea had the aura of a second coming, and indeed it was, because her novel Lark & Termite is her first book in nine years. For her “first” coming in 1979, she was immediately hailed as a darling of the book industry for her collection of short stories, Black Tickets. Her admirers included Nadine Gordimer and Tillie Olsen. She had an unusually close relationship with her publisher at Delacorte, the late Seymour Lawrence (called Sam). A champion of her work, he encouraged her to write a novel. Machine Dreams about the impact on an American family of a son, MIA in the Vietnam War, made an impressive debut in 1984. In the current novel, it is the Korean War that wreaks havoc on the psyches of a West Virginian family. In both cases, the language, while evoking Faulkner, pushes fiction writing to its next moment.

                  Before her breakout story collection, Phillips had published with Vehicle Editions: a slim volume called “Counting.” Vehicle later published her short story “Fast Lanes” accompanied by drawings from Yvonne Jacquette. Vehicle publisher Annabel Lee was on hand at the reading where Ann Close, her editor at Knopf, and writers among them Jaime Manrique and Maggie Paley gathered over wine and cheese. I've received so many orders for Jayne Anne's Vehicle books this week, Annabel Lee told me, it's through the roof.

                 Sam would be proud  

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

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)

The Doctor is In: Three on a Couch, Caroline's, 21, Gonzo 7

“3 on a Couch,” Carl Djerassi's comedy now in production at SoHo Playhouse, could be presented heavily philosophical, or light and slapstick. At a recent pre play dinner at Ama, Djerassi-who is Viennese and who in a previous life as a chemist invented the pill, (yes, that pill)-- told me, his theatrical work is influenced by Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter, so he would have liked to see his play of ideas performed with a pinch of gravitas. He finds it mildly irksome that the director went more for the funny bone. As a result of Elena Araoz's efforts, though, sight gags and pratfalls convey the hilarious illogic of a man who fakes his own suicide, the brilliance of a woman who insists upon the uses of the mango fork, and the elastic Bill Irwin-type body of the doctor who treats them. I hope Dr. Djerassi won't mind my critique: his play best brings to mind Beckett's tragicomedy, “Waiting for Godot.”
     And speaking of laughs there were quite a few at Caroline's Comedy Club for the annual benefit for Autism Research when Audrey Flack and her Art Officials took the stage singing and strumming an original composition on the lives of Jackson Pollock and Caravaggio accompanied by banjos. Flack, a New York artist famous for her painting and sculpture knows from whence she speaks and it helped that she had a straight man (as in foil), a suit from the Smithsonian, Charles Duncan, to play off her smart lyrics.
    21 hosted a breakfast in celebration of a new book on the subject of men's aging. How timely! The early diners, many of them over sixty, definitely sexy, smartly dressed, and decidedly successful feasted on superb scrambled eggs and bacon-although some cautiously opted for granola-- while Dr. Robert Schwalbe explained his reasons for writing “Sixty, Sexy, and Successful: A Guide for Aging Male Baby Boomers.” He was noticing certain trends in men coming into his psychoanalytic practice. A handsome 64, he was also seeing some signs in himself. The smart crowd did not miss the nuance, as the doctor limned symptoms reminiscent of the bewildering case of our former governor Eliot Spitzer. The diagnosis: He could have used this book.
    And finally, in this election frenzy, a documentary on the life and times of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson will be released on the 4th of July. “Gonzo,” directed by Alex Gibney, this year's Oscar winner for “Taxi to the Dark Side,” arrives just in time to remind us what real American patriotism is all about. The provocative film, narrated by Johnny Depp who starred in the movie of Thompson's “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” on the writer and inventor of Gonzo journalism who committed suicide in 2005, will inspire some thought about how Dr. Thompson might now be kicking butt with his in your face writing, that is, if he were in

Dr.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

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

Foreskins and other non-chick appendages

Bringing in the new year can be fraught with all sorts of emotional baggage. Shrinks tell us this season is the worst. In truth, I was laughing my head off under a palm tree at Sun Bay, a white sand beach on Vieques; the cause was the Philip Roth-esque kvetching of a lapsed yeshiva boy, Shalom Auslander's “Foreskin's Lament.” Sold a bill of goods by Hashem himself, the author recounts his coming of age, beginning with childhood in the insulated religious community of Monsey, New York, his bildungsroman laying bare the sensibilities and truths of Jewish orthodoxy. A rare glimpse indeed! As he goes secular, a heart rending barter with the Almighty over porn, traif, and violation of Shabbat gives way to a huge dilemma, the conceit of Auslander's story: should he have his newborn son circumcised? Oy vey is mir! I chortled through his pain-and partied hearty on Beet,TV's  Andy Plesser's Puerto Rico rooftop gazing at the stars. Finding G-d in Orion's sword, I prayed-in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination and our continued occupation in Iraq-for world peace.

Regina Weinreich             Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura