Gossip Central

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. 

Spy Daddy: The Man Nobody Knew

If novelists John le Carre and Alan Furst were interested in true-life stories, they might have written books about William Colby. Instead his son Carl Colby, a documentary filmmaker who has made award-winning films on Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Frank Gehry, and Bob Marley, among others, has turned his ample investigative attention to the life of his father, a military man and CIA director whose career spanned ill-fated chapters of American history: the Kennedy presidency and the Vietnam War.  George Bush Sr. followed him as CIA head. 

By everyone's admission, William Colby was a man with many secrets, a more than fertile subject even in the conventional Freudian paradigm. The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby features extensive interviews with Donald Rumsfeld, Brent Scowcroft, Bob Kerrey, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Schlesinger, Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh, Tim Weiner, a heady 85 in all; the film works best as a family story set against post WWII.

Radha Blank's SEED Premieres in Harlem

Forget the red carpet. The drum beats on Fifth Avenue and 125th Street drew a select audience into the National Black Theatre for the eagerly awaited world premiere of Radha Blank's SEED. The 5-character drama involving a social worker, a family, and a prison inmate, against a back screen of the New York City subways and Harlem environs is fresh, lively, and let's just say, features one of the funniest exchanges ever to take place at a DuaneReade.

Drive: Nicolas Winding Refn's Fetish Film

In Robert Creeley's poem, I Know A Man, an unnamed narrator urges his friend John, which is not his name, to buy a goddamn big car/ “drive, he sd for christ's sake, look out where yr going,” predating the spirit of a current slick and stylish movie, Drive, directed by Copenhagen-based Nicolas Winding Refn, who won Best Director in Cannes. On a recent afternoon over an iced cappuccino at Gemma in The Bowery Hotel, I talked to Refn about the making of Drive, his casting of Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Christina Hendricks, Albert Brooks, and his “vision.”

Take Shelter in Times of Terror and Tornadoes

The actress Jessica Chastain, lovely in a lace Carolina Herrera dress, plunked herself down on a cushion removing her beige platforms in relief after rounds of photos and interviews. A publicist was sheltering the petite redhead from the Post's Page Six editor. This was the after party for a new film, Take Shelter, at the Vault at Pfaff's, where the wait staff was dressed in Christian Siriano strapless chiffon cocktail dresses with bejeweled waistbands in celebration of that downtown boite's opening. Chastain's deglamorized look in Take Shelter as the loyal wife of a troubled construction worker, t-shirts and non-designer jeans with tousled mane, might be closer to the real Jessica. One of the great pleasures of this Sundance favorite is seeing Chastain's work with Michael Shannon.

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.

Paul Morrissey Dishes on Acting School and Andy Warhol

Film director Paul Morrissey, erstwhile manager of Andy Warhol's Factory, has been dogged, his career overshadowed by the Warhol legend. His iconic films Trash, Lonesome Cowboys, Heat, and Flesh were merely presented by Warhol and so deemed the artist's films, while it was Morrissey who actually made them. “Andy had Asperger's Syndrome; he didn't do anything,” groused Morrissey to interviewer James Toback at a special screening of his latest film News from Nowhere last Tuesday at the Walter Reade Theater. “What did Andy do?”

Fans, many friends and neighbors like Bruce Weber, were able to revisit Morrissey's unique vision at the News from Nowhere screening. The new movie, the best ever filmed in Montauk, Long Island, is a testament to Morrissey's artistry. A handsome and mysterious stranger, an Argentine illegal worker (Demian Gabriel) arrives by fishing boat, and connects with an assortment of eccentrics, most notably an older woman (Warhol superstar Viva) who occupies a rundown and secluded oceanfront compound of old style, grand, shingled houses and bungalows. The site was the property Morrissey owned with Warhol since 1971. Before selling it two years ago, Morrissey decided to make a film there, a final homage.