Gossip Central

Dishing with Bette Midler as Sue Mengers in I’ll Eat You Last

One of super agent Sue Mengers’ many rules for dealing with divas is never remind them of the beginning when you are walking them down the red carpet on the way to the Oscars. For example, do not say to Diana Ross, we are a far cry from when you were giving Berry Gordy blowjobs in the back seat of a limo. Taking that cue, it would be just wrong to remind the Divine Miss M of her work at the Continental Baths backed by the Harlettes before her Broadway revue, Clams on the Halfshell. Then again, she was so fabulous back in the day, and incarnating Sue Mengers, in I'll Eat You Last, a show that does not even touch her mega singing chops, she’s fabulous now.

Queen Noor and Gloria Steinem at the Premiere of Wadjda

Gloria Steinem, often considered the face of feminism, attended a film by Saudi Arabian Haifaa al Mansour. Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this past weekend, Wadjda was celebrated at an afterparty at D.C. Moore Gallery in Chelsea. Amidst painted photographs by Duane Michals and paintings by Milton Avery, the filmmaker chatted with Queen Noor of Jordan and others, women decidedly international from the Middle East. Regal with her hair in a French twist, the queen wore a long skirt and jean jacket. Waiters passed hors d’oeuvres, including bite sized BLT’s, leading one to ponder, whose idea was it to serve bacon to Saudis?

Haifaa al Mansour said it was not easy for a woman to make films in her country, but this film had government support. When asked what traditions she was following, she said, “There are no traditions.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

 

In God We Trust: Following Madoff’s Money

On that cataclysmic day when Bernie Madoff was arrested, his loyal personal secretary Eleanor Squillari was convinced they had made a mistake. Life at the “lipstick building,” headquarters of the largest scale Ponzi scheme in financial history was wholesome and nurturing. They were family. But when she phoned Bernie to ask what gives, he was abrupt and perfunctory. And that’s when it hit her: this was for real.

Orphans’ Brother Love on Broadway

In North Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, two young men live in a rundown house, Phillip, an agile shut-in, and Treat, a menacing low level thief, in Lyle Kessler’s Orphans at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. The play’s first time on Broadway, it will be interesting to see how the Tony Award committee will categorize this testosterone-ridden three-hander, as this fine production is sure to contend for top prizes. The third character, a Chicago businessman, Harold, enters the ménage: at first a willing caller wanting another drink, he becomes a kidnap victim when Treat smells the opportunity for quick cash. Soon a power shift: The rope bound Harold, with a nod to Houdini, frees himself and takes on a parental role.

Kon-Tiki at The Explorers Club and in Battery Park City

Thor Heyerdahl’s legendary journey from Peru to Polynesia on a raft was made famous in the Oscar winning documentary made in 1950, Kon-Tiki. In a new film of this voyage, Kon-Tiki, made with a fine cast of Norwegian actors, Thor Heyerdahl (Pal Sverre Hagen) enters The Explorers Club hoping to find support for this mad trip, and last week, in anticipation of the film’s opening and an exhibition of the raft, The Weinstein Company hosted a luncheon for a small group at The Explorers Club.

After welcoming everyone, including Josh Bernstein, Richard Wiese, Lawrence O’Donnell, Chuck Scarborough, and Glenn Close, Harvey Weinstein recounted the importance of Kon-Tiki to him as an elementary schooler. As he exuded about the “show and tell” he did on the amazing story of this Pacific Ocean crossing, you could see the boy in the man.

Breakfast with Screenwriter Paul Laverty: on Ken Loach’s The Angels' Share and Margaret Thatcher

Even at 9 AM, you want a whiskey when you’re talking about Ken Loach’s new movie The Angels' Share, screenplay by Paul Laverty, especially as you want to brace yourself for the political and economic realities of this master storyteller’s work. Meeting Paul Laverty at the Nomad Hotel over a latte and chocolate croissant, I have to tell this lawyer turned writer in no uncertain terms that one of his collaborations with director Ken Loach, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, is on my list for best movie I wish never to see again. It was that powerful, that good, and that disturbing. And so I greeted the new film, about a young man from a difficult, violent background who attempts to rise above his circumstances when everyone around him is pulling him back down, with fear that Loach would do it to me again: that is, have me rooting for The Angels' Share’s protagonist, a young guy named Robbie (Paul Brannigan) who tries to make good and discovers he has a real nose for fine aged whiskey, only to disappoint me with an unremittingly sad end. I was not prepared to be so pleasantly surprised with The Angels' Share’s generous humanity.

Sting, Trudie Styler Honored at We Are Family Foundation Benefit, with a Little Soul from Sam Moore

Fresh from D. C., from a concert at the White House, Sam Moore performed his “Hold On, I’m Coming,” “Something is Wrong with My Baby,” “Soul Man” revue at the We Are Family Foundation Benefit on Thursday night, a tribute to Sting and Trudie Styler for their humanitarian efforts. An impassioned Slater Jewell-Kemker (20) and an equally impressive young man Ndaba Mandela, yes, Nelson’s grandson, spoke about the rock couple’s work as founders of their Rainforest Foundation, as did Caryl M. Stern, President and CEO of U. S. Fund for Unicef. Then Sting and Trudie accepted their award, with Trudie doing all of the talking, explaining how, on a trip to Brazil, they learned that the logging industry was stripping indigenous peoples of their home, burning down the rainforest. They set up their foundation to help save the land from private, commercial interests and are now operating in 23 countries. Trudie Styler affirmed their mission, “Compassion for one another makes us special. Our destiny on this planet is a common destiny.”

John Pizzarelli Quartet (Plus One) at the Café Carlyle

This entertaining show may be billed as a jazz quartet, but as aficionados know, John Pizzarelli has a secret weapon: his dad. As he tells you, Bucky Pizzarelli, now 87 and seated beside him, has a long and distinguished career on guitar performing with Vaughn Monroe and other big bands of that era, but with his son John—and another son, Martin on bass—(that must be the family rebellion), the show at the Carlyle that started this week is comprised of smooth standards sprinkled with patter, as if son John, front man on guitar who also sings, needs to tell Bucky just where to come in.

Holocaust Remembrance: Three Films of Survival

For Holocaust remembrance 2013, what do we remember? As my mother, a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and liberated from Stutthof used to teach us, life is a gift. And it really does matter, how you survive. 

Stories of survival can read like fairy tales, best case scenarios fueled by heroism, ingenuity, and luck. In the documentary No Place on Earth, guided by a strong-minded matriarch, Esther Stermer, who insisted that rather than follow their town in Ukraine to the ghettos and camps, the younger men should find hiding places. The family hid in caves, large enough in places, and also sufficiently sinewy and muddy to elude anyone trying to look for them.

Kinky Boots: High Kicks for Everyone

Here is a musical on Broadway with a philosophy a girl can love: Kinky Boots starts with a rousing tribute “The Most Beautiful Thing,” to shoes. On a pedestal sit a pair of red patent leather pumps to die for. Fetish, to be sure—“Sex is in the Heel”, Kinky Boots, at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, is comprised of music by rocker Cyndi Lauper with book by Harvey Fierstein based on a charming and memorable British film of the same title, Kinky Boots is also a feel good extravaganza of leggy drag queens and divas including two major talents, Stark Sands and Billy Porter, who as Charlie Price and be-sequined performer Lola, dare to ask the quintessential Fierstein question: what is a man? (This may not be simply a matter of footwear.)