Gossip Central

Stew, on Broadway

When it opened downtown at the Public Theater last May, the exuberant, “Passing Strange,” had audiences laughing at the intelligence and wit of its book and bobbing their heads to clever variations on traditional guitar-driven rock. Many critics including me knew that this blast of fresh energy would make a b-line to Broadway vying for some big honors, but in several interviews Stew, the black, bald, big-bellied, bespectacled M.C. and the show's originator dispelled such thoughts by saying this move was simply not the inventive journey he had in mind for his rock concert cum bildungsroman. The coming of age of a black musician/song writer, the story is Stew's own. He looks on amused, skeptical, disapproving, interrupting with musical riffs of his own as a younger self (Daniel Breaker) grows and matures. Aided by an excellent cast performing multiple roles, Stew-that's the performer's real name-- and his musical collaborator Heidi Rodewald take this wellworn genre to a new place, reviving a classic rock idiom with a nod to bluesy rhythms, gospel, crooner tunes, and such disparate sources as Gilbert and Sullivan and Kurt Weill. A product of LA, the young artist goes from middle class to bohemian, to Amsterdam hash houses, to Berlin cabarets, before his inevitable return home; the portrait includes heady (often drug feuled) lessons from preachers, politicos, prostitutes and pornographers: “We are all freaks depending on the backdrop” becomes a mantra.
          The show has such buzz, Diana Ross attended a preview as did “Seinfeld” alum “Kramer” Michael Richards. The irony of this comic --who's had some bad press after using some racial slurs coming to this show, after all, the story of a black man's quest for identity-was not missed.
          And so, confronting Stew on “Passing Strange's” opening night at the lavish after party at Espace, after a thrilling performance at the venerable uptown Belasco Theater attended by Edward Albee, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Marshall Brickman, Debby Harry of Blondie, Spike Lee, Rosie Perez (all the way from Brooklyn with a broken toe), Martha Plimpton, among the stellar cheering crowd, I said, “I thought you were too cool for Broadway.” “Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “Don't worry,” I said, “you're still cool.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Albert Maysles for Real

Little Edie Bouvier Beale vamps on the cover photo of “A Maysles Scrapbook” (Steidl/Kasher), a coffee table volume with introduction by Martin Scorsese illustrating the depth and breadth of the legendary Albert Maysles' career from 1955 to the present.  Edie is of course one half of the mother-daughter team celebrated on Broadway last year in “Grey Gardens,” the musical based on the documentary by Albert and his brother David who died in 1987. With her signature shmatte tied around her head, her legs oh so posed to reveal the sexy curve of her hip, and beckoning with a come hither look, Edie stands for Albert Maysles himself inviting you into his world, featuring a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of his most famous works, among them “Salesman” and “Gimme Shelter.” Images of Mick Jagger, Muhammed Ali, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Salvador Dali, and Charlotte Zwerin, peek out from these pages, as do pictures of people in Turkey, Russia and Poland from his travels in the late '50's. All are currently exhibited in a retrospective of his work at the Steven Kasher Gallery. This is a boom time for Albert: HBO is airing the documentary he made about Christo and the Making of “The Gates,” the closing night film of last year's Tribeca Film Festival. On Sunday, friends and family packed Film Forum for a special screening of his 1966 “With Love from Truman,” a forty minute interview with Capote shot on location at Tiffany's and his home in the Hamptons. We may have had excellent feature biopics of the author of “In Cold Blood” in recent years, but as Albert Maysles said in his introduction about nonfiction films, “There's nothing like the real thing.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Awards, Academy and Guild Hall

Maybe I'm suffering from award deprivation as opposed to the usual fatigue, but I found the Academy Awards show unsurprising but satisfying, from Barbara Walters' pre-event interview with the modest Ellen Page, to Marion Cotillard's win. Wearing a white, detailed Jean Paul Gaultier gown, Cotillard has old school glamour; having met her on opening night of last year's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema (this year's opens this Friday) when “La Vie en Rose” premiered, I knew she was charming and fresh. I was pleased to have Forest Whitaker's prediction affirmed--that he would be handing the statue to her. The academy did not spread the wealth. Often the major writing, directing, and best film honors are divided, but hey, just the idea that the Coens' quirky, indie sensibility could reign supreme at the venerable Oscars is ok by me. I just wish Julian Schnabel's “Diving Bell and the Butterfly” had received greater recognition. Among his important credits, the outsized painter is responsible for having put Javier Bardem on American radar, as Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, caught in Castro's revolution! I got every word of Javier's Best Supporting acceptance speech for playing the creepy villain in “No Country for Old Men”-his salute to mom and country--and I don't know Spanish!
     As for satisfying awards events, you cannot beat Guild Hall's gala, held every year at The Rainbow Room. Great people, food, and speeches. Yes, speeches. But with this year's Lifetime Achievement Awards going to artist David Salle, playwright Joe Pintauro, and filmmaker Mel Brooks-yes, that Mel Brooks, this year's event on March 3 will be extra hilarious, and also a reminder of what an excellent arts institution can provide a community. At a pre-awards cocktail party at the Core Club last month, David Salle and I talked about an extraordinary dance performance held last summer in Tony Ingraio's East Hampton sculpture garden. Salle had created a silver tree for the bare stage, a luminous tree that made everything around it shine. That's a great metaphor for Guild Hall.

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

The Counterfeiters

Gone are the days of mea culpa, when Germans responding to Daniel Goldhagen's indictment in his 1996 book, “Hitler's Willing Executioners,” openly discussed their shameful participation in the Holocaust as a way of expiating their guilt.  Stefan Ruzowitzy, director of “The Counterfeiters,” the Austrian selection for Best Foreign Film Oscar and one of the five nominees, said at a recent dinner hosted by Elie Wiesel and Sony Picture Classics, the film is not doing well in either his native country or in Germany.  In German speaking lands, the pervasive, “enough already,” “been there, done that,” overrides interest in this thrilling story set in the concentration camps of Mathausen and Sachsenhausen. Taken prisoner by the Nazis, a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), is forced to lead a team of prisoners in first forging the British pound and then the dollar in the attempt to destroy the Allies' economy while fattening the Third Reich's coffers. Ruzowitzy's tight, fast-paced script is based upon the book, “The Devil's Workshop,” by Adolf Burger, himself an accomplice to Operation Bernhard, as this historic incident is called, played deftly by August Diehl. “Sally,” the talented forger is a rogue by any measure and one great attribute of this film is that it does not sentimentalize Holocaust events or the untoward Jewish experience. The German officers taunt, humiliate, and murder their prisoners for stooping to the most immoral activity to survive. And the Jews are portrayed realistically, that is, while moments of compassion do occur, they also betray one another and rise to levels of unspeakable behavior as needed to live yet one more day. As played by Markovics, a well-known Austrian theater actor, Sally has a facial twitch and elastic body. His spirited tango dance underscores his dream of residing in Argentina, where the real-life Sorowitsch ended up after the war, but not before going to Monte Carlo with a suitcase of notes to be lost at the gambling tables. There, in this film's fiction, he hooks up with Dolores Chaplin, yes, another of Charlie's granddaughters. Realizing that the success of his movie would depend upon attention to detail, Ruzowitzy searched museums for authentic period printing presses, only to find them down the street from where they were filming. The actual printer was hired as an extra and taught the actors how to use the vintage machinery. It is safe to predict that this fine film will follow last year's German language “The Lives of Others” to Oscar glory. But even if it doesn't, do not miss it.

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

The Counterfeiters

Documentary Fortnight at MOMA

With his dark brooding gaze, manic manner, and troll like looks, you would never guess the philosophical raconteur, monologist and talk-show regular Brother Theodore who died in 2001 at age 94 was such a ladies' man, but as friends say in a new film, “To My Great Chagrin,” premiering at MOMA's Documentary Fortnight, he always had two young babes by his side. Michael Jaglom, the star of several of his brother Henry's movies attested at last night's screening, “he was obsessed with sex;” one girlfriend was 50 years his junior, 50 years, Theodore would repeat, “just in case I didn't get it.” Dick Cavett recounted how he got one of his biggest laughs ever: Once on his show, Brother Theodore was carrying on, his rant building to a rage, Cavett mimicked how his arms flailed about. “Do you have any hobbies?” Cavett asked nonplussed. A German refugee, who played chess with Einstein as a young man, lost his fortune and family in the Holocaust, Brother Theodore, who called what he did "stand up tragedy," was a master of the understatement: “To be Brother Theodore is no bed of roses.”
Veteran documentarian Manfred Kirschheimer premiered his “Spraymasters,” a look at the subversive world of four graffiti artists. To a soundtrack of jazz and hip hop, Futura2000, Lee, Pink Lady, Zephyr talk about their vision, the dangers of stealing spray paint and breaking into yards, the commercialization with such brands as Nike. Who knew, observing the colorful panels on subway trains as they make their way over els and through tunnels, that this genre of American cartooning would have its stars and build international creds?
This may be the season for tracking the documentaries destined for the big awards, but here are fine examples of the current state of the art nonfiction films.

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Celebrating Juno

If you were going to celebrate the movie Juno's multi-Oscar nominations, what would you serve? Duh, hamburger, of course. And for an A-plus burger, served with gravy boats of French fries and ketchup, dolled up and elegant as if they were truffle encrusted foie gras, where would you go? Well, try 21, the classic eatery of old New York that made Holly Golightly swoon. There on Friday, “A Diamond is Forever” sponsored a luncheon for well-wishers. Five signature hamburger phones were raffled. One winner, Sigourney Weaver, whose new movie “Vantage Point” opens next week, quipped, Peggy Siegal had the whole thing rigged, “knowing I have a teenager.” Among the happy diners, disappointed only in that they too had not been so lucky to walk away with this plastic souvenir rumored to be worth thousands on Ebay, was Halley Feiffer, so smart in Noah Baumbach's films, accompanied by her father Jules. You could say with Ivan Reitman introducing his son, the director Jason, the event had a familial theme: Jason publicly gave the teary-eyed old man a bear hug. Ivan Reitman, of “Ghostbuster” glory, famously has never been nominated for an Oscar and, as he did on CBS Sunday Morning's show yesterday, he loves to recount the story of how his young son asked him, would he attend the ceremony if Jason were nominated? “I should have known then,” said Ivan without a hint of Freudian angst. So now, teary-eyed and shepping nachas, he'll go. Ivan Reitman also introduced the movie's star Ellen Page to the luncheon crowd, saying he thought she was 13 when they met on the set. Turning 21 on February 21, Page has a precocious look that makes “Juno” what it is. Now, in a dreamy doze, she graces the cover of “The New York Times Magazine.” Page's demur demeanor has many facets: her standout performance in “Hard Candy” as a seductive girl who, wielding a knife, turns the tables on a pedophile, had people talking at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Speaking about the award attention she's getting as Juno, she repeated the word “Surreal” several times. She may know more about that word than meets the eye, as a fan of the book "2012" The Return of Quetzalcoatl,” Daniel Pinchbeck's account of the transformation of global consciousness. When I asked about her literary bent she said she was also into Pinchbeck's previous “Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism,” suggesting there's a whole lot more going on inside that pretty head than the mere contemplation of herself as “Best Actress.”

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Juno (trailer)

Fashion Week

Are designers merely modest or timid? After the shows, where a half year's hard work is paraded in front of celebrities, photographers, Bloomingdale's buyers, etc., the custom is to venture out for a nanosecond, air kiss the applauding crowd, and quickly retreat behind a curtain. Betsey Johnson is of course an exception with her signature runway cartwheel, and Maggie Norris simply entertained off site with her model Keira Chaplin (yes that's Charlie's granddaughter) prefiguring the red dress debut inside the tents the next morning featuring surprise model Laura Bush. But what about Joanna Mastroianni, Charlotte Ronson, Lela Rose, Erica Davies of Development, whose exceptional shows were the highlight of my fashion week? How do they remain demure after displaying their gorgeous wares? Memorable were Mastroianni's Morocco inspired lapis/alabaster embroidered silk organza hooded robe, pomegranate strapless dress with fan bodice and asymmetric hemline, and black lacquered silk “croc” used on a number of ultra chic ensembles.
Eschewing that Ozian don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain, you can count on the Blonds, Phillipe and David to take the catwalk. That's because their show defines drama. Fashionistas Patrick McDonald and Kenny Kenny supplied high wattage from the front row, both impeccably accoutred for the occasion, Patrick in what I could describe as embellished fox hound hunter and Kenny in a jacket that looked like vintage Thierry Mugler accessorized with black rabbit ears cocked to the side just so. No, he told me, the jacket came from a former Marc Jacobs designer. The Blond's collection went from black lipsticked monster haired women in leather spiked corsets encrusted with Swarovski crystal to bare gloss lipped fairy goddesses in blond tresses in white silk chiffon with ostrich and pearl detail. “Le Blond Angels” mugged in pink, canary, and turquoise sequined jumpers. But nothing, not even the Barbie corset dress with blue fox Marlene coat could not top the Blonds themselves walking the walk--Phillipe especially styled as Gwen Stefani. Illustrator Robert W. Richards whispered, “It takes a special woman to wear these clothes,” to which I replied with an eye on Patrick and Kenny seated in front of us. “No, it takes a special man.”

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

No End in Sight

“There are some laughs in my film,” said Charles Ferguson introducing “No End in Sight” at a special screening on Saturday night showcasing this contender for the best documentary Oscar, “but they are unintentional and dark.” OK, “Sicko” is definitely funnier. The humor in “No End” comes in hearing Rumsfeld repeat the word “quagmire” or “victory.” In seeing W's dumb look as the film, through interviews and Baghdad footage, deconstructs the half-baked,
ill-conceived, thoughtless, self-serving policies put in place after Saddam's regime was toppled in Iraq. Careful not to take on the raison d'etre of the “war,” Ferguson examines the dismantling of an ancient country with a rich history, the looting of a library wherein irreplaceable documents dating from antiquity were burnt and destroyed. As one Iraqi put it, We have lost our identity. How can this have happened? That, of course, is the least of what everyday Iraqis experience under our on-going occupation. (Four million Iraqis remain homeless.) But you feel his pain. From the perspective of a military action, the dismantling of the Iraqi army was a turning point in fomenting a situation whereby an insurgency could thrive alongside a corrupt interim governing body. As Ferguson makes clear in the film and in a new book, our commander in chief paid little to no attention to highly detailed documents, allowed incompetent, inexperienced individuals with no knowledge of the language or culture to take charge, and could have cared less. Is the U.S.administration just a bunch of bunglers and boobs? Are the key players playing war: the video game? Do Rumsfeld and Cheney form their own axis of evil? These were some of the questions raised by a room full of movers and shakers at an after-screening dinner at the Plaza Athenee: two-time Oscar winning Barbara Kopple, newsman Gabe Pressman, and others attended to an impassioned Q&A conducted by Arianna Huffington. Jane Fonda, Amy Goodman, Erica Jong, were among the most ardent speakers.  Huffington with her hugely successful blog, Huffington Post.com was especially concerned with the media's role in the continued American malaise. While everyone agrees that a draft would have galvanized dissent, still the news failed to deliver the information that might have had people storming Washington. Amy Goodman, of Pacifica radio's “Democracy Now” suggested the media is seduced by access. Erica Jong quoted Noam Chomsky's prediction that we would not have an investigative media as independent outlets become absorbed into conglomerates. That woeful time has come. Jane Fonda's presence itself evoked her dramatic protest of the Vietnam War. Huffington took a need-I-say-more stance, invoking Dante who imagined the hottest spot in "The Inferno" reserved for those who know better and do nothing. So, what can we do? Ferguson says, “We can start by telling the truth.”
            Now Ferguson vies for an Academy Award with Michael Moore's “Sicko” and Alex Gibney's “Taxi to the Dark Side.” Moore did his Iraq film, “Fahrenheit 9/11” and won the Oscar for “Bowling for Columbine.” All three beg for responsible leadership and all should win in a three-way tie, but to choose, I say “No End in Sight” is the most profoundly resonant as a statement of this country's current historic moment. Alex Gibney served as Executive Producer on this film. I asked Ferguson how he felt competing with Gibney. “We both win if I win,” he said, “I told Alex this morning, he comes onstage to accept the award with me.”

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura