Gossip Central

Hamptons Journal: Theater Out East

Rounding his shoulders and shuffling his steps, Alec Baldwin does a sheepish, lowkey Justin Bieber. Strutting tall and leggy, Christie Brinkley does a bravura Miley Cyrus, explaining how the teen’s name morphed from Destiny to Smiley, to, well, you know, and how lucky she was when free tampons poured forth from a vending machine just as she’d run out of change.The body language is all affect but the words come from the actual autobiographies of these famed youth who have barely lived or done enough to merit a complete sentence, but that’s the conceit of “Celebrity Autobiography,”

the hilarious brainchild of playwright and actor Eugene Pack. “We could not make this stuff up,” Pack said of an evening at Guild Hall on Friday night that also included the wisdom of Diana Ross (Dayle Reyfel), David Hasselhoff (Jerry O’Connell), Ricky Martin (Pack), and poetry by Suzanne Somers (Brinkley), to mention a few whose words spoken make for unintentional comedy.

Hampton Journal: Author’s Night Reads and Marcus Samuelsson’s Yes, Chef

 “Non-fiction for sale here,” hawked comedian Robert Klein, seated in a row of writers under the Author’s Night tent at Gardiner’s Farm this past Saturday. Readers crowded about, one wanting to know whether the location in his memoir’s title, The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue, was in Brooklyn or the Bronx. The Bronx, said Klein, selling soft. Jeffrey Lyons was back with the paperback of his book; Dr. Ruth attended for the first time with what else, sex advice; other authors included David Margolick, Martin Amis, David Baldacci, Robert Caro, Dava Sobel, Ken Auletta, Sam Talbott, Lynn Sherr with Swim: Why We Love the Water. 

Looking Good: Richard Gere in Arbitrage

Richard Gere in Arbitrage does for Brioni what he did for Armani in American Gigolo. He looks good in a suit. On Sunday night for the new movie’s East Hampton premiere, he wore a blue denim shirt, his signature look out east. The film, written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki, is suit specific, Brioni donated, which is why when Gere’s character Robert Miller burns one to cover up a scandal, it hurts. Playing a rich and powerful mogul is not a stretch for Gere. Married to Ellen (Susan Sarandon), Miller appears to be an upstanding family man, a model billionaire, involved in charities. In the film’s reality, Miller is involved in some high stakes shady dealings with another big time player (Graydon Carter in a standout performance). Honesty is beside the point.

Can She Sing? Big Maybelle: Soul of the Blues at Bay Street and Into the Woods at the Delacorte

A fine new musical had its world premiere at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater last night, Big Maybelle: Soul of the Blues at Bay Street, based on Maybelle Smith, a blues singer from the early 20^th century, who once opened for Billie Holliday and toured America in the perilous segregation era, plagued by diabetes, an unhealthy girth, and low self-esteem. The Tony Award winning Lillias White has the chops to portray her, accompanied by a stellar band, narrating a classic horror tale of drug and sexual abuse, but most of all, performing her material with measures of sass and grace. 

The Gang’s All Here: Eric Fishl at Guild Hall and other East End Galas

 
“Beach Life,” the new exhibition at Guild Hall features Eric Fishl’s large-scale oils, including “The Gang” from 2006. The 84 x 108” canvas has the artist’s swimsuit clad wife April Gornik walking toward the viewer, and many of his painter posse and others—including Donald Sultan, Ross Bleckner, and Ralph Gibson-- looking on. On Friday evening, many of them were on hand for the show’s opening and Guild Hall’s annual summer gala under a tent at nearby Gardiner’s Farm. Present too: models adorned with gorgeous Van Cleef & Arpels jewels, honorees Esty and Dan Brodsky, and DJ Alexandra Richards. Board member, Alec Baldwin attended with his new wife Hilaria. M. C. Joy Behar quipped, “He’s so taken with his yoga teacher, he can barely breathe.”

The Museum as Funhouse: Yayoi Kusama at the Whitney/ “Ghosts in the Machine” at the New Museum, “Century of the Child” at MoMA

The wow kicks in early at these exceptional shows at museums uptown and down. First at the Whitney: Polka dots, the signature pattern for the artist Yayoi Kusama now in her ‘80’s, are appropriated for fashion. Louis Vuitton is doing for her designs what the luxury line does collaborating with Takashi Murakami. The museum features a roomful of canvases in yellows and reds, a display of summer joy for an artist who retreated from the art world for awhile, suffering a mental breakdown. In July, a party of a press opening at the museum with champagne and hibiscus cocktails, smoked salmon and quiche, was followed by a ribbon cutting at the Louis Vuitton Fifth Avenue store, the dots and her image complete with orange wig in its windows. Compelling and sexy, the museum retrospective features soft sculpture, phalluses embedded in shoes, on a jacket, on furnishings. Old maybe, from the sixties, but newly fresh, and titillating.