Gossip Central

Lilyhammer: A Gangster's Rap

On a balmy New York evening with snow a distant memory, the corners of the Crosby Hotel were fitted with white stuff, the waiters sported big ski lodge sweaters and snow boots, and the décor, usually warm, was even cozier. The occasion was a screening of an episode of Lilyhammer, the first of five original series planned for Netflix. Harvey Weinstein and Netflix's chief content officer Ted Sarandos hosted the evening, with help from uber party planner Peggy Siegal. Starring E Street Band guitarist and The Sopranos veteran Steven Van Zandt, Lillyhammer begs the question, where can mob fugitives go to hide? Even ex-Sopranos? Well, how about Lillehammer, the remote town in Norway that famously hosted the Olympics in 1984? It looked pristine, beautiful, Frankie ("The Fixer") Tagliano explains even as he brings his ways of getting things done (i.e. bribes, blackmail) to cut through the country’s bureaucracy. Talk about a clash of cultures! 

Bruce Springsteen Stands Up for Heroes

In its 5th year, The Bob Woodruff Foundation and The New York Comedy Festival's night of Stand Up for Heroes, featured a number of comedy's best voices, Ricky Gervais, Jim Gaffigan, Seth Myers, and Jon Stewart among them, but this annual laugh fest to benefit something very serious also had a few personalities less known for making people laugh. Bill Clinton thought it odd he'd open at a comedy night and had a great moment reminding the packed Beacon Theater that through genome research he's learned that he, Hillary and Chelsea are all descended from Neanderthals. Even Bruce Springsteen got into the comedy: showing off New Jersey moxie and menschlechkeit, he graces this stage every year, rocking out and auctioning off a guitar or two.

Making Whoopie at the 20th Annual Jazz Loft Party

What were Laurel & Hardy doing at the annual jazz loft party? One of many great pleasures of this night of superb sound to benefit the Jazz Foundation of America's efforts to help musicians in need was Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra performing some wildly original accompaniment to the comic duo's silent movies, “Double Whoopie” and “Wrong Again.” But that's the kind of night it was on Saturday: while the northeast was challenged with a pre-Halloween ice storm, jazz devotees showed up and made their way around Chelsea's Hudson Studios drink in hand following their ears to hear a who's who of jazz royalty.

Beauty and the Beast: Shen Yun at Lincoln Center /PEN on China / Horrible Bosses at Vault

Spirits soar over snow capped mountains, a sword wielding hero, Wu Song, slays a man-eating tiger, a dance corps in Barbie pink clusters like plum blossoms, another twirls handkerchiefs, nymphs frolic in the waves. Heaven opens its gates. In spectacular color and gorgeous costumes, Shen Yun, a New York based arts group enacts the rich cultural heritage of China at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. 

Bruce Ricker/ Jazz Foundation of America – Keeping the Spirit Alive

Jazz lost one of its own last week, with the death of Bruce Ricker. Not a player per se, Ricker, a lawyer with a passion for jazz assembled Jay McShann, Count Basie, and Big Joe Turner in Kansas City for a jam session and filmed it. The resulting Last of the Blue Devils (1979) was a unique historic moment, a gathering of musicians, sequenced as an extended riff, as close to spontaneous as the music itself. The much praised film caught the attention of Clint Eastwood and Ricker then helped Eastwood with the scores of several of his films including The Bridges of Madison County and Mystic River, to name two films lauded for their soundtracks. Collaborating with Charlotte Zwerin, Ricker made Straight No Chaser (1988), a documentary about Thelonius Monk, and more recently films about Dave Brubeck, Johnny Mercer, and Tony Bennett. 

Con Me If You Can: The Broadway Musical

Catch Me If You Can: The Musical is a con man's story, and the biggest con is the show itself. Like seeing a superbly performed magic trick, we're going to buy it, and happily revel in being duped, or that is what is promised: a conceit that separates this traditional Broadway vehicle from the 2002 caper movie of its inspiration. 

From the beginning, we see Frank Abagnale, Jr. arrested at a Miami airport for an array of misdeeds and misdirections. He's going to show us how to make “butter out of cream,” in Catch Me lingo. To limn the storyline, as a teen, Frank not only passes bad checks, he passes himself off as a doctor, lawyer, whatever. But hey, self-invention is the ultimate American myth; add to that the Freudian search for the father and you've got what lifts this song and dance vehicle, even if by play's end that father-son pair is united by handcuffs.

Remembering Paul Bowles

The American writer and composer Paul Bowles-born in Queens, New York-- would be 100 years old tomorrow. In our age of instant fame, it is useful to think about an artist who was famous for not being in the limelight. In his time, the cult of personality was taking hold, and would worsen in the days of Warhol, auguring the era of the “superstar.” (Although after seeing the current show of his screen work at MoMA, Warhol managed to make a formidable art of “stardom,” as both celebration of the self and ironic take on it.) Old-fashioned, gentlemanly, and romantically pure, Paul Bowles shunned post-war American culture.

In the 1950's with the advent of television a new invention, the talk show, provided extraordinary access to the widest audience then imaginable. Bowles retreated to Tangier, Morocco-first visited in 1931 at the suggestion of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas-- where he lived modestly in an apartment that had the look of a spare place in Greenwich Village. In fact, when Bowles was famous as a composer of incidental music for the plays of Tennessee Williams and Lillian Hellman on Broadway, and wrote music reviews for the Herald Tribune under the editorship of fellow composer Virgil Thomson, he and his wife, the writer Jane Bowles, lived for a time on 10th Street, between 5th and 6th. He also shared a house in Brooklyn Heights with W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee. The Chelsea Hotel was also home, for a while.“The writer doesn't exist,” Bowles, handsome as a matinee idol, famously exclaimed. What mattered is the work. His autobiography, Without Stopping (1972), was famously dubbed “Without Telling” by fellow novelist William Burroughs. A who's who of the 20th century, the book features anecdotes of friendship and collaboration with Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, and Salvador Dali.    

Even after this illustrious and glamorous early career as composer, Bowles became famous as a writer, perhaps following the example of his wife's most celebrated work, a novella published in 1943 called Two Serious Ladies (now available in a handsome edition, see www.sortof.com). His first novel, The Sheltering Sky (1949) became a film in 1989, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich. Three other novels would follow: Let it Come Down (1952), The Spider's House (1955), and Up Above the World (1966). A collection of his travel writings has been reissued, Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993, (see www.sortof.com). A master of the short story, his Collected Stories 1939-1974 (Black Sparrow) remains a favorite. Readers fascinated by a westerner's take on life in a Muslim culture will do well to read such stories as “A Distant Episode,” “Pages from Cold Point,” “The Time of Friendship,” and the fable, “The Hyena.” The story, “You Are Not I” was made into a film by Sara Driver in the early 1980's. Thought lost, a print was found in Bowles's apartment and then taken to his driver's house and stored. Recently discovered and restored, the film of “You Are Not I” is a brilliant evocation of this writer's unique sensibility. In addition, Bowles' literary career includes translations of the Moroccan writers and storytellers, Larbi Layachi, Mohamed Choukri, Mohammed Mrabet, and Ahmed Yacoubi. For updates on all things Bowles including centennial celebrations, see www.paulbowles.org.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Sheryl Crow Rocks the Armory for Cancer Research

Last Thursday evening at the Park Avenue Armory, after the consumption of an elegant dinner and the auctioning of many fine items including the most adorable black and white spaniel, Sheryl Crow rocked the cavernous house. In sequins over jeans, she sang her signature songs: “If it Makes You Happy” and “Soak Up the Sun.” More important, she, a cancer survivor, sang the praises of Dr. Samuel Waxman. This was the 13th annual Collaborating for the Cure Benefit for the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation and from the looks of this crowd, young and enterprising, money appeared to have no limit. The live auction alone garnered nearly $1 million. 

According to a press release, the foundation has awarded $75 million to researchers worldwide since its inception in 1976. When I first attended such a benefit, in 2009, I was pondering an irony: my mother, the late Pola Weinreich died in the care of this world-renowned oncologist at Mount Sinai in 1996. When I spoke to him, reminding him of an event commonplace to him and devastating to me, he spoke to me for several minutes while others tried to get his attention. Did I give her the best care I could? he sincerely wanted to know. A sign of a good doctor, he very much wanted to talk about her demise and the deadly disease that he was hoping to cure in his lifetime with the foundation he created 34 years ago.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

 

David Amram at 80

No one can believe David Amram is now 80. Yes, you can do the math. But, to see him cavorting about the ample stage in front of a packed Symphony Space on Thursday for his birthday celebration was surely to see a man in mid-life: Hence the title, “The First 80 Years.” 

In typical Amram style, performances of this quintessential American composer and ethnomusicologist's “greatest hits” were not self-reflexive, but rather homages to the greats he performed with, learned from, those who inspired him: Odetta, Joe Papp, Woody Guthrie, Frank McCourt, Max Roach, Dizzy, and Kerouac. In memory of Floyd Red Crow Westerman, he played with Tokasin Ghosthorse on Lakota Courting Flutes. The Queens College Orchestra conducted by Maurice Peress played “This Land is Your Land,” and I could feel his Whitmanesque expansive juxtapositions. Similarly his “Home on the Range” was bebop Americana.

Perhaps my favorite part of the evening was the medley of his music for movies: “Splendor in the Grass,” the original “Manchurian Candidate” where John Frankenheimer just directed him, Take it where it takes you. And of course, “Pull My Daisy,” Working with Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie and also a version created for a documentary I worked on in the 1980's, “The Beat Generation: An American Dream.” Scatting his signature “senior” spontaneous bop, he sounds good, a hip guy in a suit with pipes and pennywhistles hanging off his neck making it up as it suits him. The actor John Ventimiglia brought this sequence home with his reading of the last paragraph of Kerouac's “On the Road:” And don't you know that god is Pooh Bear.    

Surrounded by family, his kids, Adira, Alana, Adam, his ex wife Laura Lee, and many fans and friends including Jacques D'Amboise, Barbara Kopple, Ira Gittler, Malachy McCourt, Ray Mantilla and John McEwan of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, David Amram hosted the evening without sentimentality, without excess, eschewing the typical testimonials for such a grand occasion. After all, we've got the next 80 to anticipate and cherish.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Imagine: Nowhere Boy Grounds the Mythic John Lennon

As a teen, Harvey Weinstein worked at Apple Records with the responsibility to shepherd about a young band, The Beatles, he told the well-heeled guests at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room Sunday night. He introduced a new movie The Weinstein Company will release in time for John Lennon’s 70th birthday on October 8: Nowhere Boy. 

In a case of corporate synergy, the stunning evening hosted by Montblanc was the global launch of the Montblanc John Lennon donation pen, and connected with similar launches in Berlin, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Mexico City. “Tonight we will make the world feel as one,” announced Montblanc CEO Lutz Bethge with Susan Sarandon by his side. He also affirmed a commitment by Montblanc to support education all over the world. Yoko Ono appeared on a large screen, live from Berlin’s Peace Tower to emphasize the message. In an important gesture, she spoke about allowing the Nowhere Boy filmmakers the rights to use the song, “Mother.” She mentioned yet another movie to open at the upcoming New York Film Festival limning his life in New York: Michael Epstein’s LennonNYC. 

The launch’s invitation promised a special music guest. It was indeed a pleasure to hear Christina Aguilera’s cover of “Imagine,” accompanied by Linda Perry at the piano. Later, as the Allen Room’s scrim was lifted, the word was emblazoned across Central Park’s entrance on Columbus Circle, where Strawberry Fields remains nearby, a memorial to the dead Beatle. You could see the machinery in motion, celebrating, yet also creating a myth of this man. You could see Yoko Ono’s interest in sanctifying John. At the same time that one can be a tad cynical and wary of exploitation, the Montblanc John Lennon pens are truly magnificent art objects gorgeously designed, gem encrusted, -- they’d be a thrill for anyone to own. 

The movie Nowhere Boy brought matters down to earth. Given that it is about an icon, large enough to be murdered by a madman and remembered in the way that everyone remembers those extraordinary moments: where you were when you heard, etc. this movie is small in the best sense. It tells the story of John’s youth, his highly confused parentage, dramatizing his brutish behavior and also revealing the sources of his most tender songs. A family story, Nowhere Boy features wonderful performances by the two women, his spirited birth mother Julia (a dynamic Anne-Marie Duff) and the aunt who raised him (the splendid Kristin Scott Thomas). This is the story of a young man whose life is a rage against an adverse, sad childhood full of loss and identity issues. As the teen John Lennon, the actor Aaron Johnson sports a pompadour appropriate to a Liverpool lad seeking to become a rocker in the manner of Elvis, but in real life he wears Rimbaud-like waves. He and director Sam Taylor-Wood, a noted photographer who was wearing an Alexander McQueen cocktail dress at the posh opening are recent parents and in between speaking to reporters and greeting Christian Siriano and  Alan Cummings, they worried how their six-week old daughter fared in her hotel room. Already out in England, the movie has had only modest success, Johnson said, because it opened the same day as Sherlock Holmes and Avatar. Harvey Weinstein recounted an early Nowhere Boy review: Sir Paul McCartney said he loved the movie, finding fault only with the casting of Paul: He was much more handsome.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura