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! 

The Sound of Mumbai on HBO2

Sheila Nevins knows how to pick them. At HBO2 where documentaries are her domain, so to speak, she reigns supreme. But “don’t call me lucky,” she cautioned members of New York Women in Film and Television at a special breakfast, lest anyone might envy her this dream job. To get to this place is a lot of work. Part of that work is selecting films for HBO2 to produce as she did with the Paradise Lost trilogy, sending a film team to West Memphis to see what they can find out about a sensational murder story. And sometimes it is just seeing a film she wished she had made as in the case of The Sound of Mumbai to air on HBO on November 23.

Dee Dee Ricks Bares Breast on HBO

Dee Dee Ricks is shameless in a very good way. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, this single mother, a success on Wall Street with lots of money to burn, as she puts it, realized that her boys, then 5 and 3, would not remember her if the disease progressed to a worst case scenario. And so she filmed every moment of her cancer battle: doctor visits, chemo, double mastectomy, hair loss, wig creation, reconstructive surgery and without a blink, her breasts before and after. Her film, The Education of Dee Dee Ricks, directed by Perri Peltz, will air on October 27 on HBO. Throughout, she appears remarkably up beat and fearless even while expressing her darkest moments.

Erin Burnett Anchors Out Front

In the elevator moving 9 floors up the Museum of Art and Design to Robert Restaurant, C and Jeffrey Toobin hotly debated the news of the day: the trial of Dr. Conrad Murray. Would Michael Jackson's doctor be convicted of involuntary manslaughter? Chances are he'll get off. Then again, . . . . Doors opened to a throng of television news A-listers abuzz, celebrating Erin Burnett's upcoming show, Out Front, to premiere Monday. Cameras flashed. Anderson Cooper posed in front of the CNN scrim.

Women War & Peace: Power Breakfast for PBS Premiere

Just a few blocks from the UN with police lining Lexington Avenue preparing for President Obama's visit, the Four Seasons Restaurant was the site of a power summit on world peace. A new WNET 5-part series focused on the critical role of women worldwide in war stricken regions is to air on 5 consecutive Tuesdays starting October 11 on PBS, and the mood was fierce to say, without women at the table, there will be no peace. 

Remembering 9/11: Portraits of Resilience

You could feel the weight of the occasion at the Milk Gallery in the Meatpacking on Thursday night, the site of a portrait exhibition and screening of a documentary marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Not that NYC was lacking in remembrance, but these photographs of key players in the event and after by Marco Grob for Time Magazine's tribute volume, Portraits of Resilience embody ennobling gravitas, the kind of historic moment captured in oils by the great masters.

Gloria Steinem: A Bachmann Win Would Set Back the Women's Movement

For a public person, Gloria Steinem, 77, the writer and activist who is for many people the face of feminism, knows how to get up close and personal. Last week, at the Time Warner Center premiere for the documentary limning her life and career, Gloria Steinem: In Her Own Words to air on HBO on August 15, most in attendance were too young to have seen her in action in the '60's and '70's, or the historic moments that defined her career and this chapter of the struggle for women's rights: her reportage as a Playboy bunny, the founding of Ms. Magazine, bra burning, Roe v. Wade, and much more. 

Cajun Fiction: Treme on HBO

If you are late to the HBO series Treme, have no fear that you will be at sea. You can jump into the second season, to commence this Sunday, without missing a beat. That's because the series, evocatively set in post-Katrina New Orleans, is so well conceived (David Simon and Eric Overmyer) with syncopated story lines focused on appealing characters, and the assurance that cherished memories of that port city's special place in American life with its music, food, unique language and sensibility have not washed away when those levees broke. Weighing in on the conversation about New Orleans-Why rebuild it? What leadership? What funds? Have Wynton Marsalis and Harry Connick, Jr. sold out?, the show also features sly humor, insider tidbits and some of the best jazz on television.

Jerry Weintraub: His Way By Way of Brooklyn, eh, The Bronx

Hollywood's Jerry Weintraub can take a joke, and one of the joys of His Way, an HBO documentary about the famed producer/promoter to air tonight is the amused testimony of family and friends-even George and Barbara Bush--about this Bronx boy's rise from Depression era Brooklyn to a Beverly Hills mansion, where he now resides with his long time companion Susie Ekins while still lovingly married to Jane Morgan. 

Working on the recent Oceans movies, George Clooney impersonated Weintraub on the phone with room service, sending mountains of food to his hotel room at 5 A.M. following a late night shoot. The actor also smacked Weintraub's rump during a massage, and, according to co-star Julia Roberts, filled his shoes with M&M's. For a man who is doing it “his way,” that's a lot to suck up, but Jerry Weintraub, the man who revived the careers of Elvis and Sinatra, who produced Robert Altman's Nashville and Barry Levinson's Diner, has a passion for people. He's a “character,” a “rare bird,” says Barbara Bush with comic timing. And, no one who ever met him forgot the experience. 

When his father, a jewelry salesman and important influence, came to visit and saw the outsized lifestyle: swimming pool and tennis courts, the champagne and caviar, he was convinced his son was in the mob. But as the film reveals with each Bronx boy-makes-good anecdote, Jerry Weintraub made it the old fashioned American way: persistence, chutzpah, a knack for making money, and luck.

As his brother, Melvyn Douglas Weintraub-named after the movie star--puts it, “He's going to sell you something, you are going to buy it, and you will like it.”

On the eve of the documentary's second “Bar Mitzvah,” a swell party at Porterhouse hosted by Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter and attended by a who's who in media-I caught up with him to talk about the fabulous trajectory of his life. 

RW: Your book, When I Stop Talking You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man, is a bestseller. Were you interested in doing a book and movie about yourself?

JW: I didn't want to do a book. Rich Cohen interviewed me for Vanity Fair. He “got” me right away and he wanted to do the book. He got 7 offers. The movie followed.

RW: Are you more Brooklyn or more Bronx?

JW: Brooklyn is more romantic out in the world, so I say that. I was more Bronx because that's where my family lived. But my grandmother lived in Williamsburg, and the whole family congregated at her house: aunts, uncles, cousins. Chickens ran free in the back yard. We killed and cooked them. 

Both cultures fed my personality. I grew up at the beginning of the war and women didn't go out and work. They stayed home to take care of the children. A warm familial atmosphere was an important part of my life. I was born in 1937. I am 73 now. And that's why I have such a cadre of friends and people around me. I have that familial side of me. 

RW: You had a “Jewish mother,” but the way you describe her she was certainly not like Philip Roth's devouring, oppressive New Jersey mom. 

JW: I was extremely lucky. I have warm feelings for my mother. My mother and my father were extraordinary. A lot of people don't have that. 

My mother read to me every night. My mother was afraid of everything in the world, everything she couldn't control. She took care of the money; my father gave her the money and she gave everyone an allowance. She loved to read and loved movies. She didn't want to travel so she experienced everything through books and films. And that's how she went to Hawaii and South Africa, in foreign films.

RW: Your life can be read as a study in success. What is your secret?

JW: I am persistent about everything I believe in. If there's a film I want to do, a record, a Broadway show-I do it. Everybody can hate it but I will still do it. I am fearless that way.

Early in my career, Lou Wasserman knew people and as a businessman, he thought he could make a lot of money with me. But I made it for myself. 

RW: You also know failure. What did you learn from that?

JW: By the '80's I was too rich and started a company. I learned not to do it again, and made more money after that failure. I learned not be somebody I wasn't. I can do anything-run companies--but that doesn't mean I should do that. I need to enjoy what I do. I enjoy making movies.

RW: Ellen Barkin thinks you rescued her. Did you?

JW: I didn't rescue her because she is a great artist, a great talent. I gave her another opportunity to rescue herself. I love her. 

We go way back to Diner. I didn't call her up to say I am going to do you a favor because you're in trouble. I don't do that to people. 

She thought she was in trouble but she wasn't because nobody can take her talent away. Talented people have to do what they do. Someone can criticize but you do what you do. Content is king. Ellen is a great actress. I was just giving her the opportunity to do that again at a time when things weren't so good for her. I knew that they weren't and I could have given the part to a lot of girls, but she was great in Oceans Thirteen.

RW: A hilarious bit in the documentary is everyone weighing in on your unusual family life, married to Jane and living with Susie. Is everyone still happy with that arrangement?

JW: It's very simple. I married Jane 50 years ago. I love her as much now as I loved her then. We grew apart at a certain time. We just lived too long. 

This monogamous thing that people try to do, to live together for 70 or 80 years, it just doesn't work. When Jane and I started to pull apart I went to her. She could have had a divorce and gotten lots and lots of money. She didn't want that. She didn't want me to mess up my estate. She loves Susie and Susie loves her.

RW: What are your plans?

JW: I have several projects including a film about Liberace with a script by Richard LaGravanese to come out a year from now. He's a great screenwriter. I love him. 

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Mildred Pierce: Todd Haynes' Tribute to Mothers

Taking the stage at the Ziegfeld last Monday for the premiere of the long awaited HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce, director Todd Haynes dedicated the night to mothers, “This is a movie about a mom. Mine passed away while we were making it.”

Starting top down, he introduced the cast: Kate Winslet: “She delivers a seismic career defining performance,” he noted, and in her career that's saying a lot. Winslet got up, splendid in a Stella McCartney sheath with polka dots on sheer fabric, her blond waves pinned back in a French twist. The stellar ensemble followed suit: Guy Pearse, James LeGros, Melissa Leo, Mare Winningham, Evan Rachel Wood, her blond tresses done like a long Veronica Lake do. Composer Carter Burwell stood up and bowed, his newborn in a snuggly. The night extended to dads as well.

If you are nostalgic about the James M. Cain's 1941 noir novel, or the 1945 movie starring Joan Crawford in an Oscar winning performance, think again. Haynes makes the material his own, more Far From Heaven with its take on the limitations of American women's lives.

This is an epic 5-part film set in depression era '30's and Mildred Pierce is one resourceful woman in a way that may feel resonant in today's economy. Principled and full of pride, she throws her cheating husband out and takes a job as a waitress in a Hollywood hash house much to the horror of her hoity-toity daughter Veda. In the 2 parts shown, Veda is played by a young actress, Morgan Turner. By part 3, Wood takes over the role as the drama becomes more emblematic of the troubled relationships between mothers and daughters.

Director Lena Dunham, whose debut film, the much acclaimed Tiny Furniture, featuring her own mother playing egad, her own mother, has a bit part in the miniseries, a nurse in a harrowing hospital scene. Ilene S. Landress, a producer of Mildred Pierce is developing an HBO project with her called Girls. You can't believe the sex these young people are having, she said of Dunham's new series, and I don't mean Mildred Pierce kind of sex, referring to the tasteful scenes with Winslet in a slip, or genteel and bare-breasted with Guy Pearce as the gigolo Monty. Added Landress of the film's locations, particularly the Glendale, California house where the Peirce family resides: We imported palm trees to Glen Cove.

The after party at the Plaza Hotel was a riot of New York arts/film people, among them John Waters, John Cameron Mitchell, Mira Nair, Jason Reitman, Paul Haggis, Bob Balaban, Steve Buscemi. Oren Moverman, Stanley Crouch and Harry Evans. And because Mildred Pierce opens a restaurant serving only chicken and waffles, we thought the dinner menu would be a no-brainer. The surprise highlight of the buffet: short ribs.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura