Gossip Central

Jessica Lange in Long Day’s Journey into Night: “I Like Dark Places”

Movie icon—and lately best known for her role on American Horror Story-- Jessica Lange has performed on Broadway only twice before, in two Tennessee Williams masterpieces, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, and now she’s in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. As Mary Tyrone, morphine addled matriarch of the Tyrone family, and wife to James Tyrone (Gabriel Byrne), her presence descending the stairs of the family Connecticut home in the 1920’s, illuminated like a specter in the play’s final moments, is unforgettable. Mother to Jamie and Edmund (Michael Shannon and John Gallagher Jr. respectively), she is frail, a wounded bird, and symbol of shattered hope, loss, loneliness, and heartache.

Unlocking the Cage: Meeting of the Mammals

“Of all of our movies, this one changed my life,” Chris Hegedus said, introducing her new documentary, Unlocking the Cage at a special HBO screening prior to its theatrical release at Film Forum this week. That’s a lot to claim from the filmmaker pair, Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker who together made films from inside “the war room” during the Clinton campaign of 1992 to the pastry chefs of France. The cute and cuddly gorillas at play in Unlocking the Cage’s opening situate you at once in a riveting film that follows an endearing nonhuman animal rights advocate, Steven Wise, into the courtrooms to fight for animal personhood.

Weiner: A Punchline or a Riff on Politicians’ Peccadilloes

Really? Anthony Weiner wants unconditional love. This big baby, as he appears for real in Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s entertaining documentary Weiner, the former congressman wants to parlay his dick on the Internet, and be elected for office. That’s the size of it. After having been outted for this offense, Weiner ran for mayor, the occasion for the film. Josh Kriegman used to work for him and had the politician’s confidence. By Weiner’s side, his wife, the formidable Huma Abedin, aide to Hillary Clinton, grimaces but stands by her man. She is the most compelling reason to take this guy seriously; unrepentant the first time, he does it again. This bizarre self-destruction may belong to the Eliot Spitzer school of politics, but in the Alex Gibney documentary about the New York governor, Client 9, at least he could identify his hubris. Not Anthony Weiner! But still, for this movie, he is a relentless, charismatic star.

Skeleton Crew Makes its Move

It would be great to think of 2008 as a bygone past, and the dire consequences for workers phased out in a bad economy yesteryear’s news, but the play Skeleton Crew, an Atlantic Theater Company production at the Linda Gross Theater, Dominique Morisseau’s powerful look at Detroit autoworkers, now moved to the, registers a cycle that’s still out of control for many Americans. In a locker room, four characters take breaks, bicker, and make for a company family, an ensemble of workers:

Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger: A Dame in Distress in The Nice Guys

Okay. So The Nice Guys is a Russell Crowe / Ryan Gosling film bromance, a hilarious romp, featuring car chases galore, broken glass and bones, bloody bodies, and a startling, zombied Matt Bomer. Still, there’s a touch of nostalgia for an early Russell Crowe who came to the aid of Kim Basinger in a film set in Los Angeles. Remember L. A. Confidential (1997)? In The Nice Guys, Basinger plays a smallish but pivotal role, yet another character in search of a young woman named Amelia (Margaret Qualley). She, a misguided, rebellious porn star, just happens to be her daughter, and Basinger’s job is head of the government’s clean up squad. Talk about acting out.

Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin: Netflix' Stars of Grace and Frankie Define DVO

This time of year, Jane Fonda is usually at the Cannes Film Festival, but this year she is working back home. After a screening of the first two episodes of the second season of Netflix’ Grace and Frankie, part of a new Tribeca Talks series at the SVA Theater for the Tribeca Film Festival, the iconic stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin took the stage for a panel moderated by Gayle King. Chatting, bickering, japing, with one another, the stars fielded questions on aging, women in the industry, careers, and lovers. “This is how it is on the set,” they assured a packed audience. In the fall, Fonda was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role as an aging actress in Youth. She said, she’s just happy to be working. With Grace and Frankie now filming their third season, she and Tomlin will be working for a long time.

A Season of Tributes for HBO’s Sheila Nevins: Fountain House

Last week at the Pierre, the Fountain House annual symposium and luncheon focused on the topic of “Suicide: Looking for Answers” with a panel of experts in this field. A special humanitarian award was presented to HBO’s Sheila Nevins, introduced by Rosie O’Donnell.

Dr. Maria Oquendo opened the symposium with the grim news that suicide has increased for girls aged 10-14, and for women aged 45-64. Professor Thomas Joiner who had lost his father to suicide spoke of three feelings often shared by those contemplating taking their lives: they often feel fearsome, burdensome, and lonely. Most emotional was Kevin Hines, a young man who survived after throwing himself off the Golden Gate Bridge. Rescued by the coast guard after a woman in a car called, and then immediately operated upon for his broken back, Hines is now an inspirational speaker on suicide, traveling all over the world with a message for those who see a loved one on the brink: “Have a meal together.”

Orpheus Descending: Going Down with Tennessee Williams

Women don’t have it so good in Tennessee Williams’ plays, and Orpheus Descending is one of his darkest. In the production at St. John’s Lutheran Church in the village, you can see why this one, with its histrionic speeches and soap opera story, is rarely produced. Which is why this production, low budget and noble, is its own kind of miracle, set where Christ and the apostles in stained glass can look on in sympathy and dismay. In Lady Torrance (Irene Glezos), Williams created a formidable heroine who is running the store, while her elderly husband (the legendary film star Keir Dullea) languishes sick. In comes a stranger (Todd d’Amour), a young man in a snakeskin jacket, who needs a job. Can you see where this is going?

Celebrating with Megan Hilty at the Café Carlyle: Homage to Rosemary Clooney

It was a big night for Megan Hilty on Tuesday, not only the opening of her two-week engagement at the Café Carlyle, but she’d garnered a Tony nomination that morning for her comedic bombshell turn in the revival of Noises Off! “And I wasn’t even singing,” she exuded, her blond curls taken back into a chignon. Shining bright in a black, curve hugging, lace and sequined gown, she’s shed the sass for class for this show, a tribute to Rosemary Clooney.

Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah on HBO

Irritating and irascible, the subject of the documentary short, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, the French intellectual writer and filmmaker, Claude Lanzmann, could be charming, and cunning as he got his desired interviews.  His epic-length Shoah (1985) went farthest to document the Holocaust, the most cataclysmic and defining event of the twentieth century, even as some deny it ever happened. In Spectres of the Shoah, to air on HBO on May 2, Adam Benzine, interviews the interviewer at age 90; the result is essential viewing for understanding Shoah’s remarkable backstory.