Gossip Central

Matthew Heineman: Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at Hamptons DocFest

A sure path to a hit documentary is a subject as brilliant, dynamic and charismatic as musician extraordinaire, Jon Batiste. Filmmaker Matthew Heineman, accepting the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at Hamptons DocFest this week, told a rapt audience in Sag Harbor how he made his latest film, AMERICAN RHAPSODY, about Batiste on a musical, emotional journey.

When he scored THE FIRST WAVE, Heineman’s harrowing glimpse of a hospital ward at the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020 seen through the life and death ordeals of several New York families, Jon Batiste talked about preparing an “American Symphony” to be performed at Carnegie Hall. Heineman began filming the original composition’s process, but soon pivoted to the deeper drama of Jon Batiste’s life. His wife, writer Suleika Jaouad’s leukemia had returned after 10 years in remission. She would undergo a bone marrow transplant as Batiste won five Grammy awards. At one point he’s cradling the statuettes; in another he’s holding her, hair shaved, tubes protruding. Heineman’s camera gets up close and personal—for 62 straight days of shooting. The viewer actually feels the emotion that fuels the art.

As with his oeuvre to date, Heineman’s portrait of this loving relationship stands with his films of courage, even danger. He has embedded with troops in Afghanistan and drug lords in Mexico. War—dire circumstance-- seems to be his thing. “Fear drives me a lot,” he said, and he could relate to Batiste’s unwavering care for his wife because his father, who attended the event, had battled cancer. The hardest part was sneaking into the Grammy Awards and filming on his iphone, he said. But as to the art of film, D. A. Pennebaker’s classic DON’T LOOK BACK, an unvarnished look at Bob Dylan back in the day, guided him.

Besides Jon Batiste, other outsized personalities featured at this content-and-narrative rich non-fiction festival included The Hite Report author Shere Hite, writer Rose Styron, pioneer in dance, stage lighting and design, Loie Fuller, American photographer George Platt Lynes, German artist Anselm Kiefer, “Lambchops” creator/ puppeteer Shari Lewis, television newsman Dan Rather—to name a few.

Barbie at the Peninsula: A Doll Rules

In the doll metaverse, Barbie is queen. A party at the posh Peninsula Hotel brought together her movie creators with members of the Academy to anoint her with awards. The movie about her has had world domination in sales. Even in Morocco, where I saw it when it was released in July along with Oppenheimer—famously creating the “Barbenheimer” unit—it was a hit, I was happy to report to Margot Robbie, who spear-headed the collaboration with Mattel and starred, and Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, scriptwriters with Gerwig directing. The phenomenon spoke of girl power, and what men have to do to measure up. So where was the movie’s primary Ken, Ryan Gosling?

Ryan Gosling made the movie a musical, his song and dance numbers major entertainment a la La La Land. Mark Ronson filled me in on creating the movie’s sound: he just followed Greta’s script. There wasn’t even supposed to be music, but fortunately she, a major music maven, and fan, was keen on creating a sound. Eschewing the pink cocktail of the evening—a prosecco with cotton candy, Ronson said he was overstuffed from Thanksgiving with family, and following a routine, waking at 7 to write. How do you follow up on Barbie? Ronson is writing a book on DJing in the ‘90’s.

“What would I do without acting!?,” exclaimed F. Murray Abraham at the party, agreeing, his White Lotus character should be continued into the next season. “Didn’t you love the writing,” he asked. “I would follow Mike White’s writing anywhere,” he said, so happy to be working. Next up: he’s the husband in the Broadway production of The Queen of Versailles, based on Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 excellent riches-to-rags documentary, with Kristin Chenowith as his wife.

Gotham Awards 2023: Robert De Niro Wants the Truth

If you ask Robert De Niro to speak, be prepared for his tirade on the former president who seeks office again. That omission seemed odd to the guests seated at Cipriani Wall Street this week for the annual Gotham Awards. Then, the actor paused realizing the words he was reading from the teleprompter were not the ones he’d written, so he started over, this time focused on the truth. After all, his movie Killers of the Flower Moon was awarded the Gotham’s “Historical Icon & Creator.” Director Martin Scorsese was not present to hear the Tribute to his film but Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone were, with Gladstone further awarded “Outstanding Lead Performance” for her work in The Unknown Country.

For those of us who have attended this yearly event, and seen it become less and less scruffy as the awards night for indies—attire: black tie, the Gothams was especially distinct for the presence of actors now able to celebrate after the seemingly endless strike. As Morgan Spector said during cocktails when asked what he’s scheduled to do after the 2^nd season of HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” “I’m eager to work.” Many, such as presenters Laura Dern, Willem DaFoe, Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Coleman Domingo, Penelope Cruz, Adam Driver—the list is long—looked happy just to show up.

The Mother of All Lies/ Down in Dallas Town: Truth in Documentaries

As the DOCNYC festival illustrated, the genre of non-fiction films remains a vibrant frontier. Asmae El Moudir’s THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES, awarded Best Documentary in Cannes and Morocco’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar, tells a hidden history through clay figurines. The “Bread Wars” in Morocco in the early 1980’s garnered little attention internationally, but locally, in Casablanca and other cities, riots were brutally suppressed, and silence about the horror was enforced.

In filmmaker Asmae El Moudir’s home, where she lived with her parents and grandmother, a photograph of King Hassan II hung prominently, her grandmother’s favorite. Her father made clay figures that she used to dramatize—or speak of—the violence in her country’s past. Dividing her time between Rabat and Paris, but preferring home in Morocco, Asmae El Moudir attended a special screening of her film at the Quad cinema recently, navigating the enthusiastic crowd’s amazement at the subtle revelations of truth about an untoward political history.

On the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the mysteries linger in the memories constructed of photographs, music, and the site itself. That is the subject of Alan Govenar’s latest documentary, DOWN IN DALLAS TOWN: FROM JFK TO K2. Govenar’s style segues on the slimmest of transitions from a famous Polaroid by Mary Ann Moorman, interviewed for the very first time, to American blues, to the homeless who house themselves in cardboard dwellings at Dealey Plaza, where JFK died in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Harmony on Broadway: The Pre-Show Schmooze

The Ethyl Barrymore Theater was abuzz: Michael Feinstein, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Lorna Luft were among the theater elite at Harmony’s opening night. Sutton Foster said she was ready to be evil, stepping in to bake meat pies as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. Judd Hirsch sat with Marilu Henner, the Taxi team to appear on The View later this week. Remarking that she last saw Chip Zien, Harmony’s narrator, on July 15, 1974—exact in her memory as she has one of those special gifts—"It was an audition,” Henner said. All this before the evening’s star, Barry Manilow, arrived.

Memory is a key ingredient of Harmony: The Holocaust’s mantra, Never Forget—echoed, asserted—but in a musical! Yes, Barry Manilow wrote the songs for this show, many years in the making about a hugely successful sestet of singers in Europe as Hitler was on the rise. Are the songs of the Comedy Harmonists ones that the whole world will sing—yes, many will live on, material for vocalists everywhere. First-rate Broadway tunes are not the only reason to see Harmony. Accompanied by his longtime lyricist Bruce Sussman, and director/choreographer Warren Carlyle, Manilow framed a tale well-timed for this moment, a memory play that insists upon an individual’s reckoning with totalitarian regimes and war. Bad things happen when bystanders say nothing.

Chip Zien’s character –based on the real-life cantor in California called Rabbi who recently died at age 98--escaped the Nazis, the only Harmonist to live to old age. Survivor guilt is the occasion for telling the past, mulling over the possibilities for a different ending. Harmony starts with the group’s auditions, youthful aspirations, and love. Beowulf Borritt’s sets form backdrops for the entertainers’ singing their way through Europe, and for the repression of Jews. But the danger, palpable now, will pass, right? Two of the Harmonists marry, Rabbi to Mary and “Chopin” to Ruth, a Bolshevik activist and a Jew. A joyful double wedding, disrupted by thugs breaking glass, recalls a Fiddler on the Roof scene. At the height of fame, they came to New York and might have performed with Josephine Baker. Onstage, in a fantasy, they do.

A highlight is a duet sung by the wives, Mary (Sierra Boggess) and Ruth (Julie Benko), “Where You Go,” after their husbands try to persuade them to leave, hoping to ensure their safety. The song, referencing the Old Testament’s Book of Ruth, resonates of the fragility of love, and their dire choices. Foils, the Catholic Mary sticks with Rabbi (his younger self Danny Kornfeld); Ruth lets Chopin (Blake Roman) know that while she may leave—better for him as a non-Jew, she will haunt him always. Played by Benko, she’s an irrepressible memory.

Tangled Up in Tulsa: Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine

Everyone remembers their first Dylan concert. Mine was historic: When Dylan switched guitars, from acoustic to electric, when crowds stormed the stage in protest. No, this was not the more famous concert in Newport. This was a few days later, in Forest Hills. A friend and I, two immigrant teens took the subway from Brooklyn to Queens to find America. Up until that day, Dylan was to me an anti-war poet/ a scratchy singer in the manner of Phil Ochs. But that day the Dylan fans were waging their own war against HIM, booing, unseating, moving forward as a mob.

It was clear: Dylan mattered. But the question was, did the rage matter to him? If it did, he took the advice of The Beatles, who advised, ‘Don’t worry about the fans, they will come back.’ And, of course, the rest is, as they say, history.

Cut to Tulsa, May 2022. The opening of The Bob Dylan Center. Why Tulsa, everyone asked. Because his archive could be housed right next door to his hero’s Woody Guthrie. Parties, music, academic meetings marked the occasion. Visiting, I could see a photograph from the concert of my youth amid the incredible collection of guitars, vinyl, notebooks, artwork—memorabilia of a creative life. And now readers of Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, edited by Mark Davidson and Fishel, can revel in their own nostalgia and more in this elegant, meaty tome—a chronology of the archival Tulsa haul, a backstory for a great biography. The publishers at Callaway took the step of creating a lengthy and helpful index.

To the photos with EVERYONE: Joan Baez, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Robertson, Allen Ginsberg, Barack Obama, footage from D. A. Pennebaker, torn ticket stubs, song lists, lyrics, stuff, add smart essays by Greil Marcus, Lucy Sante, Raymond Foye, Richard Hell limning Dylan’s writing process from foundational tapes to recordings and artifacts. Read a facsimile of Dylan’s essay on Jimi Hendrix. Peter Carey’s grim look at Tulsa’s racial divide, how the famed riots serve up classic Dylan material. A section on Dylan and the Beats illuminates the formative literature and influence that would lead to song themes and his novel Tarantula. Michael McClure, Peter Orlovsky, as well as Ginsberg were certainly on his road, but Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was a main attraction when he first arrived in the Village for the free-wheeling character based on Neal Cassady, whose amorality he would later reject.

Yoshiki at Carnegie Hall: The Unexpected Pleasures of Loss

The international superstar, Yoshiki, celebrated a 10^th anniversary “World Tour with Orchestra 2023 ‘Requiem,’” its final leg at Carnegie Hall this week. Displaying awesome musical chops at piano and drums in the separate genres of classical and rock, Yoshiki, clad in red lame coat, dedicated the tour to the passing of his beloved mother who raised him after his father’s suicide when he was 10. The drums, he explained to his many fans—some clad in full kimono and obi bearing flowers to throw onstage--, allowed him to express the extremes of his despair. Even after he performed for Japan’s emperor, his mother would ask whether or not he had slept the night before, had he eaten breakfast. He missed these nurturing flourishes even when his hands were imprinted in cement at L. A.’s Chinese Theater. Launching a clothing line in Paris and a new champagne with Pommery, he misses her mothering more.

He also dedicated some songs to two bandmates who committed suicide, and for much of the concert he admonished the audience to cherish every day. “We are here,” he kept saying, also acknowledging the pain and suffering in our world. Conductor Ward Stare led the full orchestra featuring many strings, underscoring a sorrowful tone even when the sounds soared. Singers Beverly and Ai Ichihara added to the emotional experience. After Intermission, Yoshiki, now in silver lame, performed Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake accompanied by dancers from the American Ballet Theater. Three screens projected family photos and clips from his film debut as director, YOSHIKI: Under the Sky. The next day the film, to be released this month, was screened in full at the Roxy Hotel, followed by a performance at Django.

The Gilded Age: Season 2 on HBO: The Opera Wars

Nothing says high hauteur like new money. In season 2 of HBO’s grand series, The Gilded Age, “the new” hits its stride. Forget Stanford White’s magnificent design for the newly completed Russell mansion on-turn-of-the-century Fifth Avenue, its façade built in Newport, its queen of decadent display, Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) has empires to build ascending the social strata. Snobbery, of course, does not work. Readers of Henry James and Edith Wharton fiction know how the hierarchies among the rich work, their laws finite. Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijn looks her chiseled nose down on her neighbors, nailing the divide between Old New York and New. But Bertha surprises us; aided by her husband George (Morgan Spector) and his fortune, she shows what does the trick: research, preparation, the drive to roll up satin sleeves, and grit to get the job done. For this season, we learn the “true” origins of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Metropolitan Opera House. There will be blood.

Fellowes was brilliant with the splendors and spectacle of Downton Abbey, both upstairs and down. Add to that the lives of Blacks, North and South. As we know from season one, Peggy Scott (Denee Benton), an aspiring young black writer works at the van Rhijn house as her career rises at The Globe. Turns out she has a backstory, explored tenderly in Season 2 as is the plight of our heroine, Marion Brook (Louisa Jacobson, a daughter of Meryl Streep), Agnes van Rhijn’s niece, an innocent, who has been jilted. Disgraced? Never. This season takes a more positive view: she’s merely rescued from marriage to the wrong man.

Satisfying a (guilty) itch for gossip, who’s marrying who, The Gilded Age features a dazzling cast of American stage actors: Audra McDonald and Kelli O’Hara head the long list that also includes Laura Benanti, Kristine Nielsen, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Donna Murphy, a wildly over the top Nathan Lane, to name a few. Robert Sean Leonard is a particularly cool choice for the clergyman Luke Forte, having performed in Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of The Age of Innocence.

Mourning in Lod at the Hamptons International Film Festival: When Terror Hits Home

Introducing her documentary, Mourning in Lod at HIFF, Israel-based filmmaker Hilla Medalia announced that a crew member had been murdered—one among thousands-- in the Hamas attacks from Gaza on Jews during the Shabbat/Simchat Torah holiday. Mourning in Lod plays out a story of connection and communication after terror comes to a community at peace. What might have been a silver lining moment illustrating that from acts of barbarism generosity of spirit can come, the takeaway was a microcosm of what was raging front page news: cycles of retribution demanding justice, but in the end, civilians pay for the age-old Middle East enmity.

The backstory: producer Sheila Nevins had asked Medalia to make a short film when she heard about the family of a Jewish man in Lod, stoned by Palestinians, donating his organs to a Palestinian woman in need of a kidney. Investigating the story, Medalia found out that the man had been murdered in revenge for a Palestinian man who had been randomly shot by zealous Jewish settlers, outside agitators as it were. The three families involved were intertwined, neighbors who had done business together prior to the tragic events.

East Hampton’s Patti Kenner served a pizza and salad dinner for a post-film gathering that now reflected upon news so much larger than the violent/bittersweet events at Lod—as the reality unfolded. Guests were able to find out more about this story from the filmmaker; in the end though, with news of Israel making its own movie in our minds, feelings were raw. Everyone understood: more deaths would be announced, although the actual brutality had not yet registered: Israel was at war.

Michael Mann’s Ferrari Closes the New York Film Festival: The Triumph and Disaster of Fast Cars and Men

The roar of engines and strain of race cars careening around a sharp curve make for the panache of the New York Film Festival’s final picture, but the real drama of Ferrari takes place within walls. As Enzo Ferrari, a brooding charismatic silver-haired Adam Driver is haunted by loss—of father, brother, son, friends--, he speaks of creating walls so as not to feel the continuity of pain that is part of his present, Italy 1957, years into his marriage to Laura Ferrari, a dark, grieving Penelope Cruz, who is also his partner in Ferrari, the race car company they built. But when we first see him, after a prologue of black & white footage of his own fierce driving—what he calls “a deadly passion,” he’s in bed with Lina Lardi, a lighter Shailene Woodley, a mistress with few demands. Before sneaking off for home, he tucks in a boy, their son. Home, in Modena, is where Laura with her black piercing eyes, stays secluded within rooms of maddening deep tones and swirly wallpaper, and Enzo’s mother.

The actors, permitted to be present because the film is not attached to a studio in contention, were interviewed along with director Michael Mann following the packed screening at Alice Tully Hall. Troy Kennedy Martin wrote the script based on Brock Yates’ book, Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, embellished farther than Mann’s original concept collaborating with Sydney Pollack. Locations are key: In one scene, shot in the actual Ferrari mausoleum, Driver as Enzo cries over the dead.

Most eloquent about her preparation, Cruz spoke about that wallpaper, a window into Laura’s psyche. Mann introduced her to a doctor in Modena who showed her love letters between Enzo and Laura dating into the 1970’s, just before she died, his partner till the end. A principal investor, having sold her wedding gifts to create their first Ferrari, Laura is a formidable, surprising character, the movie’s pulse. While Enzo’s lovemaking with Lina is tender, he takes Laura on a dining room table, in a wild frenzy of shared grief over their dead son, mutual sacrifice in business, and lust for a lost world. Let’s just say, if you see a gun, it must go off. Cruz dedicated her performance to all invisible women behind powerful men everywhere.