Gossip Central

Marlon Brando Speaks for Himself: Listen to Me Marlon Premieres

The visually sumptuous documentary, Listen to Me Marlon, made a big impression at this year’s New Direction/ New Films Festival. Especially noted was director Stevan Riley’s achievement in making a biopic about a great subject, Marlon Brando, who, despite having died in 2004, nevertheless comes fully alive in his own voice. Eschewing most documentary apparatus, talking heads, for example, Listen to Me Marlon is crafted from 300 hours of Brando’s audio tapes, some marked “self hypnosis.” The critics so far have been in thrall. Now about to open in New York, the film’s style was debated at this week’s premiere at the Tribeca Grand Hotel.

Garden as Art at Guild Hall-Grounds as Wild Kingdom at Watermill Center

“We don’t do rows,” exclaimed Dr. Alexandra Munroe, curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim, during a preview of the upcoming Guild Hall Garden as Art tour.  The Munroe/ Rosenkranz site features nine garden “rooms.” Your eye may focus on the expansive croquet or tennis courts, but guiding visitors past a basket of today’s crop, Dr. Munroe waxed passionate about artichokes from the vegetable garden, ready to steam and savor. 

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation Premieres in the Hamptons

Introducing the latest in the franchise, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, to an East Hampton audience that included Rudy Guiliani, Lorne Michaels, Matt Lauer, Gayle King, Dan Abrams, Christie Brinkley, Alec Baldwin, who plays it straight as CIA boss Alan Hunley, quipped about how it works to be in a big budget Hollywood movie: they need you to turn your head a different way, and fly you back to London to reshoot. He went six times—and to Casablanca too, said Hilaria Baldwin at the after party at The Blue Parrot.

Hamptons Journal: Osteria Salina, LongHouse Reserve, Wordtheater at Guild Hall

Even before we got to the Osteria Salina on route 27 in Wainscot, the reincarnation of the Italian restaurant from School Street in Bridgehampton, the word was owners Tim and Cinzia Gaglia (she is also chef) put in a barroom baby grand for Billy Joel, just in case he popped by for some pasta, as The Piano Man was wont to do. The rumor was firmly denied by Tim with a laugh, before he launched into a tale about the foibles of having music in restaurants. And by the way, he concluded, Billy Joel did drop by last Monday, and he performed. Alan Alda, dining in the porch room overlooking the pond, made his way to where Joel was playing his signature tunes to greet him, reported Tim.

Woody Allen’s Irrational Man: Fantasies of the Perfect Murder

Woody Allen revealed, at a pre premiere press panel for his new movie, Irrational Man, that he has fantasies of strategizing the perfect murder – in art, of course, as in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy or Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, epic novels or Macbeth and Hitchcock: “I love to see it. It’s fun to make it. Murder is the stuff of drama.” 

Amy Schumer Triumphs in Trainwreck

“This is the best night of my life,” Amy Schumer addressed the exuberant crowd at Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday for the world premiere of her romantic comedy, Trainwreck. Director Judd Apatow stood nearby feeding the comedienne lines, reminding her to thank Universal and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, hosts of the spectacular launch, including the lavish after party at the refurbished Tavern on the Green. Apatow had introduced Bill Hader, the movie’s nerdy heartthrob. That’s not an oxymoron. Hader did his best to project his goofy appeal onstage, but wow, he’s that sensitive, relatable man of your dreams with the wacky, raunchy Amy in this fresh and true take on love from Amy Schumer’s script based on her personal story. The hundreds gathered for this stellar event whooped with joy.

Ian McKellan in Mr. Holmes: How British is It?

Introducing his new movie, Mr. Holmes, at MoMa in which he plays Sherlock Holmes as you have never seen him, Ian McKellan called this the “quintessential” British story, as told by Americans: Jeffrey Hatcher’s screenplay from Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, and directed by Bill Condon. “The British never had a chance.” Fortunately, Americans are just as intrigued by Sherlock Holmes! With Laura Linney, deglamorized to play a frumpy housekeeper Mrs. Munro, and Hiroyuki Sanada as a revenge-bound son, the movie is as British as a crumpet. The fine ensemble swirling around McKellan’s killer performance as the aging Mr. Holmes, now in retirement in the country, is first rate. And in that spirit, the movie’s Monday premiere took advantage of Broadway’s dark night, with theater actors out for drinks and ravioli at Southgate in celebration.

Elizabeth Swados’ One Shade of Gray: My Depression (The Up and Down and Up of It) on HBO

Even though this is a serious matter, Elizabeth Swados makes you feel the levity of depression. And more, you can handle it. In one scene in the animated HBO documentary, My Depression (The Up and Down and Up of It) based upon her 2005 book, you visit a supermarket stocked with “Fresh Doubt,” “Malaise,” and “Always Rotten.” If you have ever had the dark cloud she describes hovering, you will surely recognize your personal binge. But that’s exactly what this talented theater writer and her artistic partners --David Wachtenheim and Robert Marianetti-- had in mind. Aside from medication, talk therapy, and all the remedies needed to fight depression, Swados wants you to know, in the most charming, entertaining way, you are not alone.

Alec Baldwin Shows Up for Summerdocs: William F. Buckley vs. Gore Vidal on Television in Best of Enemies

The first of three documentaries in the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Summerdocs series hosted by Alec Baldwin, Best of Enemies was sure to be a hit with the East Hampton crowd. Featuring a historic event of verbal jousting between two well matched public intellectuals, men who could turn a phrase, the conservative William F. Buckley and the leftist Gore Vidal, author of the controversial gender-bending Myra Breckinridge, the movie is perfection for an audience that remembers the media spectacle. That Buckley and Vidal were enemies aided the cause: to boost ratings for ABC, in 1968, when the network was third, or last in the age’s few channel options. In the view of Best of Enemies and its creators, Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon, this televised sparring changed television forever. Ratings for ABC skyrocketed.

Billy Collins to read at Guild Hall: A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Dentist

When I heard that Billy Collins would give a reading at Guild Hall, I wanted to talk to the U. S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003). I caught up with him in transit. 

I hope I’m not interrupting anything.

I am on the way to the dentist, so figure I have just a few minutes. I just spent two weeks in Italy at a writers retreat, Civitella in Ombria in a 15^th century castle, so now I have to catch up with things like the dentist. I recommend going to a writers retreat: It is a unique sensation to wake up in the morning and have nothing to do, so I opted to write and came up with a dozen new poems.

Will you read them at Guild Hall on July 12?

I always read new poems [at my readings].