Gossip Central

Allen Ginsberg at the Oscars, at MoMA, at Large .

When James Franco co-hosts the Oscars this weekend, it won't be as the bespectacled poet Allen Ginsberg he so lovingly portrayed in the movie Howl. Of course, Franco may win the Best Actor Oscar for his work in 127 Hours, but his Ginsberg is spot on. 

The multi- talented Franco has good taste in poets, currently immersed in projects involving American literary giants Harte Crane (the Bridge) and William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury). And Allen Ginsberg had good vision: even before Warhol made fame famous, the poet understood fame's power as a marketing tool.  He may remain the most famous poet of the Beat Generation literati, but even till the time of his death in 1997, he worked diligently, championing his close associates, Kerouac, Burroughs, Corso, Micheline, Huncke, Whalen, etc. so that they too would be known. Who wants to be the sole famed figure in his coterie, he would say.

Now Allen Ginsberg seems to be everywhere: Witness his moving (literally in motion) portrait on the 6th floor of MoMA, in a fine show featuring Andy Warhol's screen tests. In perfect synergy, his face looms large with those of Dennis Hopper, Edie Sedgwick, and others. James Franco's excellent performance is freshly available on the Howl DVD, along with an audio feature, Franco reading Howl. 

And, an exhibition of Ginsberg's photography-yes he was a visual artist too-- is displayed at the Howard Greenberg Gallery. A handsome book, Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, accompanies the show. While it is not the first collection of the poet's photos, the book includes many well-known pictures-i.e. Kerouac smoking on a fire escape-as well as lesser known Robert Frank, Peter Orlovsky, and New York back alley takes. A distinct feature of Ginsberg's work is the hand scrawled caption situating those he shot in the historic moment. 

Recently, the yearly reading of Howl at Columbia University with music by David Amram attracted crowds to that institution's Philosophy Hall. An irony was not missed: in his days at Columbia he represented rebellious youth, and now more than a decade dead, he is revered as the poet of our time.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

 

Fashion Week: Night Out with The Blonds

Fashion shows are theater, and some are more theater than most. No Fashion Week is complete without the runway extravaganza presented by The Blonds. Last night at Milk Studios in the meatpacking, a pair of Chinese dancing dragons opened a show that featured the designers' signature corsets bespangled and beaded, sequined and jeweled, tube dresses, cat suits, cinchers and capelets; a black and white “poncho” would be fabulous on say, Liza Minelli. One model sported a gold pagoda headpiece to match her gold corset, a spectacle that is only matched by the attending audience who seize the occasion for theater of their own. 

Trends included faux fur headpieces complete with animal ears pointing up, and layers of eyelashes-mainly on men, as well as an array of thigh high platform boots. Kenny Kenny was perhaps the most demure I've ever seen him wearing hats piled on one another. “I couldn't get the right height,” he explained of the fedora styles that gave him extra brims as well. Amanda LaPorte is styled as Marilyn Monroe, except the deep dip of “her” red, sheer cocktail sheath revealed several inches of ass cleavage. You could see a lot of “work” was done. 

My favorite outfit was a total python look, boots, pants, corset, worn with great style by Andrea, a stockbroker by day, and a collector of the The Blonds' designs. Each piece is hand crafted, a one of a kind. Where could you wear such an ensemble? By day I wear business suits, she said. I wear this to clubs, to dinner with my husband on the weekends. I was delighted to see The Blonds' art so tastefully put together on a real woman, because it matched my own fashion fantasies. Corey Grant, an interior designer with partner Christopher who has a preppie look except for his necklace, big fans of the Blonds, explained, unlike the shows now in tents at Lincoln Center, “There's not one buyer in the room. This is uptown coming downtown.”  

Other fans included singer Kerri Hilson, Nigel Barker, Miss J, and Jay Manuel, stars of America's Next Top Models, as well as dandy Patrick MacDonald, and Larissa in her very own signature cheekbones. I caught up with Justin James, a long drink of water, elegantly attired in gunmetal silk suit and high heels. He had done the show's wigs, glittery head dresses inspired by Japanese anime. Show over by 8:15, he was outside grabbing a cigarette: “Now I can go home to bed.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Vidal Sassoon: The Movie on a Bad Hair Night

On a frigid Wednesday last week, an inexplicable friction left my hair standing on end. Good thing I would be meeting Vidal Sassoon tonight, for the premiere of a documentary Vidal Sassoon: The Movie. I could ask this artist whose shapes defined the look of the '60's about the electric gravity defying moment, about the taming of frizz, about my lifelong obsession with hair. 

Directed by Craig Teper, the documentary did not feature curls, alas, except maybe Vogue's Grace Coddington, a radiant redhead whose bob in Sassoon's '60's heyday molded well under his expert heated direction. Rather, it offered glimpses of this American success story: A Jew from England, who never really connected with his father, spent many early years in an orphanage, who sang in synagogue, rose to fame as an artist haircutter, a television personality, and a businessman with a well-known product line. The film limned his fitness regime, work ethic, first marriages, and the tragic overdose of his daughter Catya. Impeccable demeanor intact, he is now happily married to Ronnie, a dark haired woman with bangs, 30 year his junior. 

“We both finally got it right,” Ronnie said of this successful marriage at the party at Michael's where cocktails made with Cointreau and Remy Martin were the drinks of the evening. Marisa Berenson said because she keeps it long, Sassoon never styled her hair, but back in the day, she did wear a lot of wigs inspired by his asymmetrical designs. Stylist Phillip Bloch contemplated his murderous Fashion Week schedule. The film's producer, Michael Gordon, founder of Bumble & Bumble, said he wanted to document Sassoon's remarkable career in a book and movie because hair dressers, often embarrassed to say what they do, get no respect. 

Now 83, Sassoon looks at the exceptional trajectory of his life with pride. He did not tell me much about how to solve my hair issues, but did say that at age 79, when he was approached to make the movie, he demurred, “Don't you think I'm a bit young?”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Fearless Arianna Acknowledged at the Inaugural Athena Film Festival

Is there a “celluloid ceiling?” In this take on the “glass” ceiling, women in the film and entertainment industry can only go so far. That last year's Best Director Oscar went to Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman ever to receive it, says much. So it was with great fanfare on Thursday night in Diana Hall of Barnard College that the brand new Athena Film Festival was launched, founded by Kathryn Kolbert and Melissa Silverstein, focusing on work by and about women and awarding women a newly minted prize for their achievements: Delia Ephron, Chris Hegedus, Tanya Hamilton, Abby Disney, Gini Reticker, Debra Zimmerman, Anne Thompson, Nancy Schreiber, Debra Martin Chase, Leslie Bennetts took the stage. One impressive, talented woman followed the one before, taking home a gorgeous crystal statue. 

As master of ceremonies Lynn Sherr pointed out: Athena is, after all, a Greek goddess, known for wisdom, intelligence, beauty, and eh, chastity.

Honorees were asked to speak about women who inspired them. While the names of mothers, mentors, and Hilary Clinton were invoked, Leslie Bennetts, Vanity Fair writer spoke about another Greek goddess, Arianna Huffington who that week had sold her unpaid blogger empire to AOL. Huffington had written a book about fearlessness, a necessary component of her personal reinvention. But, Bennetts also said that she did not admire Huffington's “business model.” True, as reported, nearly $300 million cash goes to her for this merger--a staggering fortune by anyone's estimation. One has to wonder at the moral imperative: why not throw some to the writers who write for nothing? That was on the tip of Bill Maher's lips when he had Arianna's face looming large on his show the following night. That question is on the tip of everyone's lips but no one wants to ask it; no one wants to burn that bridge, not even the fearless Maher! 
Where is the fearless soul who will acknowledge the elephant in the room?

Blogging -like much on the Internet --remains an enterprise like the wild, wild west, a frontier with few parameters. Leaving the stage, Bennetts told me that she has posted on Huffington, but only as a marketing tool, when she has needed to bring attention to a new book: “Why should I write for nothing when I can get paid?” she asked. 

At least this ceiling is gender-blind.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Tennessee Williams Remembered at the 92nd Street Y

In the midst of the Oscar season tumult, it is reassuring to think of our most poetic and prolific American playwright Tennessee Williams as the author of scripts that became celebrated films. Case in point, Baby Doll (1956), directed by Elia Kazan with gorgeous performances, controversial in their time by Caroll Baker, her brutish husband played by Karl Malden, and introducing a young and suave Eli Wallach. Yes, Baker is a virginal, kittenish coquette on the verge of losing her innocence. The script like much of Williams' work features fragile women, women like Glass Menagerie's Amanda and Streetcar's Blanche, maddened. You imagine them productive and happy under other circumstances, while the men in their lives, sub-conscious, unreflective, with the sensitivity of gnats buzz about noisily doing what they do.

This week the 92nd Street Y hosted a Williams celebration co-curated by David Kaplan and Thomas Keith with a sampling of readings and historic performances, a special event much like the tribute at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 2009, when Williams was inducted into the Poet's Corner. The casting was brilliant, bringing onto the Y's stage actresses closely associated with Tennessee Williams' work. Olympia Dukakis currently starring in the Roundabout Theater's production of Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore on Broadway performed the famous speech from that 1964 play about her fourth husband whose demise she occasioned by giving him a car. 

Jessica Lange had starred as Amanda in a recent production of Glass Menagerie, but at the Y performed from Night of the Iguana. Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of the famed director, performed a scene from Mister Paradise. Alec Baldwin had starred on Broadway as Stanley, but kissed Angelica Torn long and hard as Mitch to her Blanche. Torn, the daughter of longtime actors associated with Williams, Geraldine Page and Rip Torn, had known the playwright as a young girl. In a particularly poignant moment, Marian Seldes read from a 1947 letter to Elia Kazan.

Another exceptional moment was the legendary Sylvia Miles performing the role of the Princess from Sweet Bird of Youth. Miles originated the character of Mrs. Ware in Vieux Carre. Williams had written a variation of Milk Train just for her, and she performed as Maxine in the 1963 Broadway revival of Night of the Iguana. At the Y, Miles exhibited her famed comic timing, especially intoning the name of her character, the actress  Alexandra Del Lago. “I am Alexandra del Lago,” she later said, identifying utterly with the playwright's sensiblity. “Everything that happens to her has happened to me.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Revolutions of the Mind: Three Sisters and Mistakes Were Made

As everyone is glued to media, watching a real-life revolution disrupt and otherwise transform Egypt, revolutions of a quieter, less violent but powerful sort erupt off-Broadway in two plays in limited run that I would not miss. 

Chekhov is surely the poet of thwarted dreams, of aristocratic manners mutating to modernity. As staged at Classic Stage Company, with a text adapted by Paul Schmidt, and ably directed by Austin Pendleton, Three Sisters, with a dazzling ensemble of  actors, invites you to a sumptuous spread: fine china, crystal goblets, white linens on a gigantic table suggest an opulent feast for many guests. But be ware that table, a contrivance (the sets are by Walter Spangler) that turns into the house's upstairs bedrooms. Hoisted aside by play's end, the wooden platform suggests a guillotine, all promise of hope, old world finery, and intellect, cut.     

Olga (Jessica Hecht), Masha (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Irina (Juliet Rylance), the sisters of the title are situated in the countryside longing to be in Moscow. Their boredom is interrupted by the presence of the military, which for each sister presents, at least temporarily, a way out. Peter Sarsgaard plays Verushnin. Masha, married to someone older and more dull than wise, hopes to leave with him. The youngest, Irina, will settle for marriage with Baron Tuzenbach (a well-cast dreamy Ebon Moss-Bachrach), while Olga follows her path as an unmarried teacher. Their brother Andrey (Josh Hamilton) marries a vulgar village girl Natasha (a spirited Marin Ireland) who dresses garishly and systematically forces the sisters out of the homestead -but alas, not to the Moscow of their dreams. And that promise of a sumptuous feast -well, nourishing soup and warming glasses of tea are served to brooding souls enlivened up by the most crass among them: Natasha and Solyony (a very fine Anson Mount) destroy the order irrevocably, as small town life flows on. 

 

If you were watching last week's SAG awards, you may have noticed too, that when the Best Ensemble award was presented to the Boardwalk Empire group, a dozen or so New York actors stormed the stage but the actor playing Special Agent Nelson Van Alden was missing: Michael Shannon was back east playing a theater producer, Felix Artifex, in Craig Wright's masterfully written almost one-man tour de force called Mistakes Were Made. Shannon's Artifex, a theater producer, juggles buttons on the telephone making conversation with an array of characters as he attempts to make a play set in the French Revolution called “Mistakes Were Made.” His secretary (Mierka Girten) -we see her shadow behind a scrim-announces: “Johnny Bledsoe on line 1,” “Dolores (the ex-wife) on line 2,” as he bellows, argues, playing unseen, unheard characters off one another. Onstage, he speaks to Denise, a large gold fish in a tank (puppeteer Sam Deutsch) who appears to grimace at the audience. Being a New York type, Artifex deploys an arsenal of ironic, gnomic, one-liners: “Life is an opportunity to make things happen,” “What is more important than maintaining one's enthusiasm?” “Thank you for being you,” he bullshits. But here's where the totally contemporary language melds eerily with current events. Trying to get the big star Johnny Bledsoe interested in the project, he suggests a rewrite to the play's author: How about adding a young girl dying on the ground, blood gushing, saying to her heroic brother, Even if I die, the revolution would be worth it.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura