Gossip Central

Really Really at the Lucille Lortel Theater: Yes, Really

You want to scream, “Check out your sense of entitlement,” at the characters in Paul Downs Colaizzo’s richly evocative debut play Really Really, an MCC production downtown at the Lucille Lortel Theater, directed by David Cromer. That line, so memorable from Lena Dunham’s film Tiny Furniture, may not go far enough to cover the dire consequences of actions taken by this college group, illustrating a “Generation Me” philosophy that hews terrifyingly close to a Darwinian survival of the fittest. This is the generation born after Roe v. Wade, the most wanted generation, Colaizzo explained at the opening last week, defined by extreme narcissism and outsized sense of entitlement.

At Restaurant Daniel for the Oscars: Forget Walking the Red Carpet

In New York on Oscar Sunday, the red carpet will be more than a runway for hopefuls in borrowed gowns and glitter. Chef Daniel Boulud will host a special dinner and viewing of the awards show for the east coast Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at his Restaurant Daniel. The signature drink, a moired pomegranate colored cocktail with an ice cube ball featuring a mini gold statue of that hunk of an award, is called Red Carpet: pear infused vodka, Saint Germain, an elderflower liqueur, topped with champagne.

With the ultimate in Gallic grace, Boulud explained his party raison d’etre: I envy Wolfgang in Los Angeles, so we are celebrating here in New York. He and the Daniel staff worked hard to create canapes that correspond with the films:

Writers Guild of America Remembers Nora Ephron: Words Matter

At B. B. King’s on Sunday night, at the Writers Guild of America Award ceremony, amidst a lot of foul-mouthed laughs and sober minded speeches, writer/ director Nora Ephron was remembered. As a young novelist, Meg Wolitzer attested, she received a most important recognition when Nora Ephron called to say she wanted to adapt her book, This is Your Life (1988), for film. Ephron, who died last summer of cancer, was a champion of young talent. When Lena Dunham got up to receive her prize for new series, she too spoke about Ephron seeking her out. The Girls originator and star also told a story when at 15 her mom took her to Caroline’s Comedy Club to hear Lisa Lampanelli.

Safe Haven Heats Up

You could say that the chemistry between Katie (Julianne Hough) and Alex (Josh Duhamel) is incendiary in the psychological thriller cum romance Safe Haven. This film by Lasse Hallstrom based upon a Nicholas Sparks novel may be on trend in some unforeseen ways. Without spoiling the inflammatory (pun intended) end for its assured volume of fans, no one you fall in love with dies. But there’s some serious damage to property. That detail may resonate for recent hurricane, tornado, and blizzard victims.

John Lloyd Young’s “My Turn” at the Café Carlyle

From beginning to end, John Lloyd Young’s performance at the Café Carlyle was a love affair attuned to the Valentine’s Day of your youth. “You’re Just Too Good to be True,” the Tony winning original “Frankie Valli” from “Jersey Boys” crooned, to “How Can I Be Sure,” followed by an homage to the room itself. Richard Rodgers lived here, Elaine Stritch still lives here, now it’s “My Turn.” Noting too the canvas murals by costume designer Marcel Vertes who died in 1961, the dimple chinned Young seemed to be pinching himself that he would now be working in such a swell place.

Ferlinghetti: Not all Beat Poets are Beat

Back in the day, the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti was all the rage. Paperbacks of A Coney Island of the Mind (1958) could be seen stuffed in jean pockets on college campuses, on subways. Even mainstream readers who were not particularly into poetry loved the surreal imagery of this verse. A decade later, books by Allen Ginsberg were not as popular, and those of Jack Kerouac were mainly out of print. Present at the historic Six Gallery reading where Ginsberg’s reading of Howl galvanized a poetry movement, and Kerouac passed a bottle of tokay, Ferlinghetti took action suggesting he put Ginsberg’s beat epic into print. This was the official dawning of a particularly American avant-garde literary movement: especially as founder of City Lights Books, publishing house and iconic San Francisco store, Ferlinghetti was at the center of The Beat Generation.

Gloria Steinem and The Faces of Feminism: MAKERS: Women Who Make America

The Women’s Movement is not only about Gloria Steinem, she will readily tell you. First, as Rita Mae Brown exclaims in MAKERS, a documentary chronicling the most recent phase of the Women’s Movement, she’s drop dead gorgeous. Then again, she’s smart, talented, and even when the focus is on her, as when she walked the red carpet at the Makers’ premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Wednesday night, she really wants to home in on YOU, who you are, what you dream. This poise, an outward gaze, gives Steinem enormous power.

Oscar’s Divine Decadence: Cabaret at Forty

Innovative in its time, Cabaret, the quintessential movie musical marked its anniversary with a special screening last week at The Ziegfeld Theater where it premiered forty years ago. The stars, Liza Minelli, Joel Grey, Michael York, and Marisa Berenson joined Robert Osbourne onstage, answering some questions about the making of this landmark song and dance Fosse film, the 1973 Academy Award winner for Best Picture. Minelli and Grey earned actor Oscars as well, the film 8 in all. Liza Minelli attended the Oscar ceremony with her father Vincent Minelli, who helped her create her character’s Sally Bowles’ look, showing her pictures of Theda Barra and Louise Brooks. When she asked him what he thought, he said, “Strange and wonderful.” Funny to see her, in close up, the line crossed in heavy, eye-popping mascara and green nails. How did Bob Fosse create the 1931 Weimar Germany’s Kit Kat Club’s “divine decadence?”

How Am I Doing? Koch: The Movie

On Wednesday morning, just after the premiere of Neil Barsky’s documentary Koch, the news came on a television crawl: Ed Koch had missed the party, hospitalized. And this morning, on the film’s opening day, he has died. His tenure as New York mayor was not exactly “the best of times,” given a span of three-terms (1977-1989), they weren’t the worst either. They did rename a bridge after him. But even in the traditions of outsized mayoral personalities, his was particularly large, which makes the movie about him a blessing and now a bittersweet remembrance.