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)

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

Ginsberg's "Howl"

As we are marking anniversaries, today is the 50th of Allen Ginsberg's landmark epic “Howl,” and the obscenity trial defending the poem's right to be published and read on the radio. A big deal upholding our first amendment, this court decision continues as a debate in the wake of Janet Jackson's “wardrobe malfunction” and other scandals distracting us from the real obscenities, like poverty, genocide, war, etc. In the face of people massacred in Darfur, does it really matter whether the “f” word or any other such language strategically suited to a poem about individuality, and the right we enjoy as Americans to “howl,” is printed or performed? Will the poem's language sully our children's minds? Not if “Howl” is understood as the art it is. In April of 1997, when Ginsberg died, he was waging this war for freedom of speech, because even after the momentous decision, these rights have been whittled down. First, an annual reading of “Howl” on Pacifica radio (WBAI) was restricted to non prime time hours, and later prohibitive altogether because of the huge fines now applied for each word of “obscenity” aired. And so, the anniversary also marks a continued battle for first amendment rights.
           Allen Ginsberg remains as relevant today as he was in the '50's and beyond as seminal Beat Generation author along with Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. In one story line in Todd Haynes' new movie, “I'm Not There,” featured in the New York Film Festival this week, about Bob Dylan's life and music, a fictive Allen Ginsberg and his companion Peter Orlovsky ask Dylan (a tour de force performance by Cate Blanchett) whether or not he has “sold out?” This satiric scene is a clever evocation of those heady times, as Dylan kept reinventing himself, defying easy categorizations as folk, rock, country artist. Even his fans didn't get it. In America, freedom to grow and express oneself, so much at the heart of our constitution, remains a challenge, perhaps THE challenge. In the land of the free and the brave, it's hard to be free and brave.

                                                                                     Regina Weinreich

Happy Birthday, On the Road

When Jack Kerouac woke up on this morning 50 years ago,  

he was a little known writer for the last time, reports Joyce Johnson. She knew. His girlfriend at the time, she was with him waiting at the corner newsstand for the papers to come in. Having received a glorious rave in the New York Times by the critic Gilbert Millstein, soon his second novel, On the Road, became #2 on the Best Seller list. In the 50 years it has been in print, On the Road never lost its momentum as a zeitgeist novel, never lost its cool. And the question today, when it seems more famous than ever, is what gives this book of all books its legs?
The answer is simple and complicated, having to do with such qualities as integrity, vision, talent, genius-hardly the fame-making values of today. The answer is the work is art, uncompromised, even though it was revised from the original scroll that is now, an aging rock star, tattered and yellowed, touring America. As the story goes, Kerouac wanted On the Road published as it was, unfurling it for editor Robert Giroux at its completion in 1951who pointed out the impracticality of printing it that way. The manuscript languished for six years during which time Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans and Doctor Sax, among others of his “true-life” novels. Maybe fans will know the name Kerouac from 10,000 Maniacs, or a lyric by Billy Joel. But most will know it for his beloved books.
When first published on this day in 1957, On the Road spoke to a restless Ozzie-and-Harriet America and sent a multitude of individuals “on the road.” William Burroughs famously said it is responsible for the boom in blue jean sales. I guess that is what it means to be a zeitgeist novel, that as its writer, your image can sell khakis for GAP, as Kerouac's has done. But now, with the publication of the scroll text by Viking, reissues of the 1957 version, and a reconsideration of another Kerouac book, Visions of Cody, best to check it out yourself and see if this classic of two buddies on the open road speaks to you.
                                                                                                                Regina Weinreich

Ryszard Kapuscinski and David Grossman

If I had to say one theme emerging from this year's PEN World Voices, it would be loss-- but even more, how to heal.  The tribute at the New York Public Library to Ryszard Kapuscinski, the author of The Emporer (1978, about Haile Salassi), Shah of Shahs (1981), and Travels with Herodotus (2005), offered this method du choix: to remember this fearless Polish journalist who died in January, down a copious amount of vodka. To heed the words of those who knew him, the speakers: Salman Rushdie, Carolin Emcke, Breyten Breytenbach, Philip Gourevitch, Laurence Weschler repeated-and also demonstrated-- his theory: You were obliged to finish a bottle once opened, or else you could be KGB. There was no agent in this group--then again, they did not share with the audience.
     Having only first met David Grossman at last year's PEN gathering, I have no idea how he likes his vodka let alone how much he drinks. Holding himself with grace, he clearly has a different method of healing in mind. In conversation with Nadine Gordimer at Cooper Union, the Israeli novelist spoke about his usual preoccupation with the political situation in his home country: the difficulties of living in a war zone, the psychic toll of that, the ethics regarding raising one's children in the ethnically volatile area separating Jews from Palestinians and by association the rest of the Arab world. There was however an unacknowledged elephant in the room. To backtrack, Grossman has written several non-fiction books dealing with these issues. On a personal level, a parent, conflicted as he is about the nature of war, he also felt the necessity, as a citizen of Israel, to obey the rules on the military. Every young Israeli citizen must serve. As reported last July in the New York Times Magazine by the French writer Bernard-Henri Levi who had visited him, Grossman, an anti war advocate nevertheless feared a new phenomenon: draft dodgers. Later that summer, in the Israeli-Lebanese conflict after the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, his son Uri was killed in combat. With nary a mention of this personal cataclysmic event, Grossman proclaimed the luck of writers. In difficult times, they can write.                                                               

                                                                                          Regina Weinreich

Writers Gone Green

Green is no longer the color of envy. The new black, green is the color of smart and aware, vibrant, verdant, and vigilant. As the 3^rd annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature kicked off at Cooper Union’s Great Hall last night, 11 writers read works from other authors evoking environmental images, or put more plainly, to let us know landscapes and wildlife we have come to know and love are now an endangered species. When T.S. Eliot proclaimed April the cruelest month, he may have meant more than creating a downer out of Chaucer’s optimism. Will we soon be reading of Hamlet’s “unweeded garden” with nostalgia?

Gary Shteyngart said he was radicalized after seeing “President” Gore’s film, Roxana Robinson read from that great “proto-environmentalist” Anton Chekhov, Billy Collins read a sonnet about gated communities named after the wildlife they supplant, Jonathan Franzen read from Jane Smiley’s epic novel The Greenlanders, Pico Iyer read from Peter Matthiessen;s The Snow Leopard, Marilynne Robinson read from her own essay “Wilderness,” Salman Rushdie read a passage involving a “poisonous spill” from Don DeLillo’s White Noise. Other fine voices included Geert Mak from The Netherlands reading in Freesian, Moses Isegawa from Uganda, the Danish novelist Janne Teller reading from Knut Hamsen’s Pan, and Colson Whitehead reading from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

And speaking of Al Gore, he’ll be on hand at tonight’s opening of the Tribeca Film Festival. Talk about timing . .

                                                                                       Regina Weinreich