Gossip Central

Looking for Richard at the Guild Hall Gala

Actor, writer, director Bob Balaban paced about the cavernous Cipriani 42nd Street, a wad of papers clenched in his hands, as only an accomplished professional with a speech to make could. One of the artists to receive Guild Hall's annual award for Lifetime Achievement, the bespectacled Balaban, who as a teen appeared in the classic “Midnight Cowboy,” flies off to Minnesota this week to act in a new film, “The Convincer” with Billy Crudup; the Bridgehampton part-timer also has a children's book series coming out, “The Creature from the 7th Grade.” 

But now he worried that the philanthropic crowd including Michael Lynne and his wife Ninah, Patti Kenner and her 99 year old dad, previous recipient Sheldon Harnick, and many other East Enders would not be amply entertained by his words, so he had a secret. Shhhh, said his wife Lynn Grossman, pulling me aside: Balaban enlisted The Flying Karamazov Brothers to perform their juggling act, first with a fish, then with a ukulele, and finally with the award itself. 

Wow. With the very funny Angela LaGreca as the evening's M.C., the benefit for this first-rate organization looked promising indeed. Previewing the summer season, Arts Director Josh Gladstone mentioned a new play directed by Tony Walton and starring Alec Baldwin.

Another award recipient for the evening, playwright Marsha Norman said she was working on a musical with Sheryl Crow. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Norman said she really wanted this Guild Hall award: “I always wanted to be in.” The third arts recipient, Richard Prince, never made it to cocktails.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Oscar Night: Off Site Views

Awards fatigue was almost forgotten at the splendid Oscar festivities at Gilt at the Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue. Members of the American Academy of Motion Pictures who were not walking the red carpet at the Kodak Theater partied perfectly at home in New York, begowned and bejeweled, and if not surprised by the unfolding of honors for colleagues, sipped fine champagne and dined in celebration of the accolades their votes produced.

Movie legends Celeste Holm, Arlene Dahl, Shirley Knight, and Sylvia Miles escorted by painter Hunt Slonem, posed for photos and other film world notables: Mitchell Lichtenstein, Celia Weston, Courtney Hunt enjoyed specially created canapes: Mississippi style corn fritters a la The Blind Side, citrus-marinated yellowtail and blood orange ceviche for Inglourius Basterds-“served cold like revenge,” and matzo balls with chicken consommé for A Serious Man.

While the long telecast was a ceremonious end to the especially protracted award season, the results were remarkably predictable with wins for The Hurt Locker, Sandra Bullock, and so on. Actors Mo'Nique, Jeff Bridges, and Christoph Waltz won just about every important honor leading up to Oscars.  So, no surprise there.

The sheer poetry of Barbra Streisand's presenting to Kathryn Bigelow cannot be overlooked. Streisand's direction for Yentl (1963) and perhaps Prince of Tides (1991) should certainly have earned her Oscar distinction.

As to the one true surprise of the evening: Best Foreign Language Film was thought to be a battle between the Austrian The White Ribbon and French The Prophet. The Argentinian The Secret in their Eyes took home the statue. My spies, travelers in Argentina, emailed me that they were watching the ceremony at a modest Buenos Aires hotel, and there the locals partied proud.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Miscast at the MCC Gala

The Golden Globe winning actress for her role in the CBS series The Good Wife, Julianna Marguiles, was honored at the MCC gala on Monday night. M.C. Mo Rocca quipped, she was playing Silda Spitzer, Elizabeth Edwards, and other political wives scandalized by their husband's bad behavior. By the time I got to the Hammerstein Ballroom, her tv husband in question, Chris Noth, was getting a drink at the bar while a crowd pondered the silent action. 

Dinner may have been great, but the best was yet to come, an annual revue featuring Broadway stars performing roles they would never ever get to play. So, Sutton Foster (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Drowsy Chaperone, and Shrek) sang “Maria” from West Side Story, Marin Mazzie belted “Where is the Life That Late I Led,” and opera singer Dennis Miller vamped  “Memories” as Cats' Grizabella. You get the picture. 

But here was one act calculated to be hard to fathom: Montego Glover who is currently starring as a Memphis soul singer in the hit show Memphis put on a tallis (she says she got it at Barney's) and diddle-diddle-dummed as Tevya in Fiddler: “If I Were a Rich Man.” Zero Mostel may have been dancing on that roof. This powerhouse performance went through it. 

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Oscar Watch: Documentaries

Non-fiction features, however entertaining, are traditionally not high on viewers’ radar, certainly not the most controversially debated at Oscar time as say “Avatar” vs. “The Hurt Locker,” even though what makes them strong may be controversial. This year “Food, Inc.” and “The Cove,” both Academy Award nominated, drove a heated debate on the ethics of what we eat. As one observer put it, sex used to fuel that kind of moral fervor. Today it is food But are we still talking about movies? Or good movie-making? So often documentaries are considered for the issues they raise, even by Oscar committees, rather than their art.

 

This year for non-fiction film honors, these fine works are joined by “Which Way Home,” a heart-wrenching view of Latin American boys hopping freight trains through Mexico to make it to the United States, “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” on a politically volatile piece of US history, and “Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country,” a Danish film by Anders Ostergaard about the 2007 uprising in Myanmar.

 

What makes this last unusual in a field that can be a frontier for innovation is that it is shot through the cameras of the independent journalist group, Democratic Voice of Burma. In fact, the very act of documenting the oppression of citizens and Buddhist monks protesting the country’s oppressive regime that had held them hostage for 40 years, suppressing foreign news crews and even the internet, was a subversive act. The act of smuggling the devastating footage of 30 anonymous and underground video journalists risked torture and life imprisonment. The art of putting all this material together involved not only assembling the footage, but showing how the footage was acquired.

 

An audience including documentarians Albert Maysles and Robert Richter, and Julie Taymor, Jane Alexander, and Gay Talese joined director Anders Ostergaard for a special screening hosted by HBO Documentary Films and Oscilloscope at MoMA recently. At dinner at Osteria del Circo, many marveled at the ingenuity of the filmmaking. When asked whether he thought he would win the Oscar, Anders Ostergaard smiled and said, “Dead monks vs. dead dolphins,” referring to the subject of The Cove. “No, I don’t think so.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura 

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Genes

Opening his 1955 novel Lolita, Nabokov's narrator Humbert Humbert describes himself as “a salad of racial genes.” In hindsight, and based upon Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s new PBS series, Faces in America--to air on Wednesdays, February 10 through March 3--perhaps the novelist was being less metaphoric and more real than he imagined. 

At Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Room, with city views stretching east along Central Park South, one episode of the four-part series called “Know Thyself” was screened on Monday for a crowd that included Brian Williams, Lynn Nesbit, S. Epatha Merkerson, David Remnick, McGee Hickey, and Henry Louis Gates, Sr.

Harry Evans asked before Tina Brown could stop him, had I spit into a cup? Was my DNA tested? The night proceeded like something of a parlor trick with Gates a charming host. Guess who is related to whom. 

Believing that the triumph of American democracy is its melting pot, its immigrants, diversity, and genetic ancestry, Gates has been busy tracing the genes of some prominent Americans, among them Mario Batali, Eva Longoria and Yo-Yo Ma.

Here is what we found out both onscreen and off: Poet Elizabeth Alexander is descended from Charlemagne. With his Russian Jewish ancestry film director Mike Nichols is related to the heart surgeon/ tv host, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Muslim Turk. 

Upon discovering that he and Gates had genetic material in common, Regis Philbin said gamely, “I am honored. There is no one in my family who even went to Harvard.” And, how in the world do I explain this to Kelly Ripa? Lots of luck, Reeg. 

Despite scientific experts participating in this captivating study, the significance of this material will bemuse skeptics. Meryl Streep illustrated her diabolical sense of irony when asked how the discovery of her ancestors going back several centuries made her feel: more important than I already am, she quipped rolling her eyes. 

Gates pointed out that the results prove no matter what was going on throughout human history as regards race, class, ethnicity, once the lights were down, everyone was sleeping with everyone else. That said, here is no surprise: Hollywood Reporter's celebrity columnist Roger Friedman is genetically joined, an “autosomal” cousin, to gossip doyenne Cindy Adams.

It's a small world after all.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Claire Danes as Temple Grandin: Anticipating Awards

You may have seen the billboards over the Long Island Expressway: Claire Danes as you've never seen her, in a juvenile retro curls with eyes staring out as wide as saucers. In the role of the autistic, gruff voiced writer, educator, scientist, inventor, and consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior Temple Grandin, she is as unglamorous as a glamorous movie star can be. 

At the premiere of this HBO movie this week, to air on February 6, her tresses sleeked and wearing a satin trench, Danes took praise for her outstanding performance in stride, chatting with Jessica Lange, Marlo Thomas, Debby Harry, Narcisco Rodrigez, Cynthia Nixon, the Culkin brothers, Kieran and Macauley. Her husband Hugh Dancy was just a few blocks away, rehearsing his new play, the MCC production of “The Pride.” Also present for the screening and fine Italian dinner at A Voce: cast members Catherine O'Hara and David Strathairn, as well as Temple Grandin and her mother Eustacia Cutler. 

Subtitled “Thinking in Pictures,” the film shines a light on autism in its successful efforts to put you inside Temple Grandin's head, to see her thinking process, so that you actually understand where her seemingly erratic behavior comes from. Think of Dustin Hoffman's star turn in Rain Man. Only here, several damaging myths about autism are dispelled in the depiction of the remarkable relationship of Grandin with her mother, a woman so strong she refused to institutionalize Temple, who was still not speaking at 4.

The movie is a nine-year in the making passion project for producer Emily Gerson Saines, who has an autistic son.

Just before the fine Italian dinner at A Voce, in the Ladies Room, Eustacia was having a tete a tete with Julia Ormond, who portrays her so well in the movie, about the liberties taken with the mother-daughter story for the sake of the drama. “You have to make a story, otherwise you don't tell anything,” Cutler said wisely.

Because Temple Grandin is now famous for her work in the humane handling of cattle slaughter, many anti-meat advocates will find this film controversial.

Temple Grandin, wearing a snazzy cowboy shirt, has her own look. She had given Danes some tapes to help her prepare for this role; the two had spent a day together. She beamed pleasure at the actress's incarnation of herself. “Everyone else was just acting,” she told me, “but Danes was me. And yes, I eat meat.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Golden Globes for Beginners

Woody Harrelson was right. Christoph Waltz did in fact win the Best Supporting Actor Globe, and sat exultant at the Weinstein Company's afterparty at the Beverly Hilton Hotel's Bar 210 and Blush Ultra Lounge (formerly Trader Vic's) with his wife Judith and friends. Close by Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban occupied a banquette. 

Also present: Carey Mulligan and her look-alike mom seemed unfazed by the rain that threatened to leave teardrop markings on silk chiffon, and happy that Sandra Bullock took home the statue for Best Actress/drama. Gracious and aware that she will have her time, Carey was genuine in her appreciation.

With televised replay of the ceremony, the party which also celebrated Belstaff, the Italian men's fashion line that designed looks for Nine and Inglorious Basterds, featured an Asian style menu, Martini &Rossi cocktails, and almond studded Haagen Daz ice cream pops. No one should go hungry, especially after all those speeches.

By the time we got to the tented outdoor patio, we could see Tom Ford and Julianne Moore ducking out through an emergency exit under a much-needed accessory: an umbrella. That may have been a theme for celebrities: red carpet, ceremony, party, and escape.

Said to be the best for parties of all the awards, for Golden Globe novices, the Beverly Hilton is divided up into party areas, with Globes winners getting extra carpet time at individual studio affairs: HBO, In Style. The Cartier sponsored NBC-Universal affair was a rooftop extravaganza. While not encouraged, party hopping keeps everyone on the move, and hotel corridors provide their own amusements.

Outside the ballroom, a parade: Sophia Loren, Mo'Nique, Toni Collette, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Bacon. An aide assisted Kyra Sedgwick with a wayward sash. Sandra Bullock swished by splendid in her purple Bottega Veneta. Quentin Tarantino who speaks in only one mode, passionate, gesticulated wildly button holing a rapt Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal, about his favorite moment in Lone Scherfig's An Education, a personal favorite that will sure be listed among the Oscar's Nominated 10. 

Uber-stylist Rachel Zoe in a black and silver scallop motif tiered number posed for photos. She had expertly put together Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Garner, and Kate Hudson for the evening, each one weatherproof, durable and gorgeous.

TV/ Actor/ Drama winner for Showtime's Dexter, Michael C. Hall let me hold his Golden Globe, and it was heavy.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Anticipating the Golden Globes

By the time Woody Harrelson arrived at the Chateau Marmont penthouse, the party hosted by The New York Times Style Magazine-with editors Gerald Marzorati and Stefano Tonchi, writer Lynn Hirschberg, hotelier Anton Balazs--was well underway. A Peggy Siegal event in the tradition of her most astounding soirees, this one featured a famed terrace chockablock with legends: Joan Collins Jane Fonda, a nd Shirley MacLaine. Jane Seymour joined them for a photo. Dom Perignon champagne, vintage 2000, flowed. Did Woody, a star of the movie The Messenger, think he would win a best actor award? No, without hesitation he said, “That prize belongs to only one man: Christoph Waltz, and he's brilliant.” Across the room, a Hollywood Who's Who, the Austrian actor seemed poised for his close up.

The stars arrived in enclaves: A Single Man's Tom Ford with Julianne Moore clad in red. Claire Danes with pal Mamie Gummer, A Serious Man's Michael Stuhlbarg stood near Amy Landecker, Marisa Tomei, Bob Balaban, Carla Guigino, Chloe Sevigny, Dana Delaney, Jena Malone, Elizabeth Banks, Lindsay Lohan, Quentin Tarantino with Waltz, more directors Oren Moverman, Sofia Coppola, Oliver Stone who recently finished directing Carey Mulligan in Wall Street II. Nailing a coquettish Audrey Hepburn persona perfectly in An Education, the young star had her mother in tow. Tom Cruise held court inside near the bar. Katie Holmes really is taller, and while I wanted to know whether she truly embraced Scientology, this was not the place.

But back to Woody who was wearing a hat, to paraphrase a Kerouac haiku, that wasn't on his head. His Messenger co-star Ben Foster kept grabbing it claiming the pork pie shaped topper was his, and explained their comic symbiosis. They were doing a Laurel and Hardy routine in the crowded space as if no one else was there.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Jazz Baroness on HBO

Herbie Hancock remembers Pannonica, the Rothschild heir who so loved American jazz that she abandoned an aristocratic European life of castles where royalty dined, to live in New York, surrounded by cats (felines and players), and make her rounds from club to club in pursuit of the music. Driving her Bentley, she chauffeured Hancock and Barry Harris from the Five Spot to midtown one night without stopping for a single light, this jazz legend told me at a premiere screening of a documentary film about her at HBO last Thursday. The film will air on HBO on November 25.

In the jazz world Pannonica is herself legend: Charlie Parker died in her suite at the Stanhope Hotel. Friends with Thelonius Monk, she housed the piano genius for the last decade of his life until his death in 1982, while he was married to Nelly to whom he was devoted. 

Famous in this coterie, for her relatives she is an obscure branch on a family tree-that is until Hannah Rothschild, Pannonica's London-based grand-niece, a documentarian for the BBC, began to investigate. Filled with the music she loved, interviews with Sonny Rollins, Clint Eastwood, Thelonius Monk, Jr. who all testify to Pannonica's essential support of the musicians in matters from health care to groceries, and with Helen Mirren reading her words, this film illuminates Pannonica's unusual choices to take on the role of jazz “angel.”

The film is especially good as it limns the story of the filmmaker hoping to glimpse a piece of her own family history. Having in the '70's cut my teeth as a journalist covering jazz for The Village Voice and the now defunct Soho Weekly News, I was pleased to talk to Hannah Rothschild, happy that Nica will receive her due in this musically rich documentary.

Q: Why was it important for you to tell this story?

HR: I had to think about whether or not I was making a film about someone I would find interesting even if I had not been related. The answer was yes. 

Q: What do her children think of the film?

Originally her children were keen on it. They got cold feet when they realized they wouldn't have final control. That would ultimately rest with the person who paid for it. The BBC. They got nervous. Now that the film is made, I don't know. I hope they like it. I am sad it is not something we could have done together.

Q: What about the rest of the Rothschilds?

The others did not know very much about what she had done, for example, the missions she had flown in Africa during World War II. They didn't understand her. And in America: Why was she going to prison? Saying the drugs were hers? Living this strange dissolute life? She was in a different world and had slipped out of the family's consciousness.

Q: Take me through the stages of how you got this film made.

HR: I have made films for the BBC since I graduated from Oxford. This one took 9 years. In the early '90's, I interviewed Nica's sister Miriam, doing the filming myself. All music is pre-recorded, some from BBC archive. I was lucky to have footage: Michael Blackwood and Christian filmed Monk in 1968, around the Five Spot and different places. 

I cold called Bruce Ricker. I saw his name on Straight No Chaser, [an excellent Monk documentary he made with Charlotte Zwerin]. Ricker [co-producer on Jazz Baroness] found an old interview. I suddenly had her voice on the tape recorder. He was helpful in getting Helen Mirren. Bruce called her up. She said yes. Then, I had the absolutely terrifying experience of directing Helen Mirren. 

Q: Your film features interviews with jazz greats and aficionados. How did you make your choices?

HR: The people I asked to be in the film were Nica's friends. For example, Clint Eastwood got in touch with her when he made Bird, the Charlie Parker movie. He met with her and some of her children at the bar at the Stanhope, Nica's, named after her. She helped him with research. She saw Clint's film before she died; someone asked, what did you think? She replied, “I looked like a constipated horse.”

Q: Did anything about Nica surprise you?

HR: It takes something to completely walk away from your life, from what is familiar. I don't know many people who've done that. I couldn't. Then you realize that she created another version of her life. She left a comfortable life in Europe and became a hausfrau in Weehawken. She just switched locations. The musicians presented a different form of family. Monk was a nightmare to live with. According to the new biography by Robert Kelly, Nelly was having their 4th child and Monk was off in a crack den. He didn't go to his mom's funeral. He turned up for part of the wake. A wonderful man, much loved by his kids, he was not easy. It would be difficult not to be bewitched by Monk's story. He was a great genius. She was there to facilitate, his patron. Nica left the Jewish aristocracy and joined the jazzocracy.

Q: What is it like to be a Rothschild?

We are pretty normal now. When Nica was born they were the wealthiest family in Europe. Prime Ministers would come to see them. The guest book was filled with shahs and presidents. Today the family has the vestige of great inheritance without any real power. I am proud that my brother and father are quite successful. Obama would be welcome.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Joy Behar at the Oak Room

The Oak Room at the Plaza was chockablock with funny women, celebrating Joy Behar's new television show on HLN, to premiere on September 29, where this funny woman will opine on pop culture to politics. It's a yenta convention, observed one partier. Introducing Joy, Barbara Walters quipped that she thought it would be Star Jones or Rosie who would graduate from “The View” -neither was present. After Walters' very public contretemps, they were not expected. And Joy Behar who will retain that coveted View seat countered Barbara's accolades, saying that Libya's President Mouammar Kadhafi had a built a tent in Bedford just for his interview. He was waiting for Barbara now. (In fact, at the UN across town, world leaders were clogging the streets. Outside the Plaza, sat a motorcade with chauffeurs talked Turkish into their cell phones.) And so the evening went: Lorraine Bracco could not walk in her skyhigh platforms. “What was I thinking? She said stumbling over for a photo. My kids insisted,” said the former shrink on the Sopranos who told me she was on her way to LA to film a pilot for a new HBO series. Suze Orman  was not dispensing advice on money for the evening, but for this occasion comedy is recession proof: champagne, filet and a magnificent salmon. Others on the scene: Joan Rivers, Angela LaGreca, Hoda Kotb, and guys too, like Larry King, Bob Balaban and Reverend Al Sharpton. Susie Essman said she wrote up the experience of having her bridal announcement on the pages of the New York Times-that's chapter 11 of her new book, “What Would Susie Say?” (October, 2009). “Curb Your Enthusiasm” just started its new season and, as Susie Greene, when it comes to Larry, she holds nothing back. I tell her she cracks me up giving it to that Larry David, unrelenting, even if he is an SOB. She laughs, “Oh, he can take it.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura