Gossip Central

HBO’s Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds Premieres at the New York Film Festival: New Meaning to the Word “Swing”

Carrie Fisher made a wildly entertaining show about her story of growing up the child of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher: Wishful Drinking also became a popular HBO film. A casualty of her parents’ divorce with a sharply bracing sense of humor, Carrie Fisher now stars with her mother in a new documentary, aptly named Bright Lights. This week, the movie, to air on HBO, premiered at the New York Film Festival. Now 84 and living in Beverly Hills in a house next to Carrie’s, Debbie Reynolds missed this swell night. But she announced on the phone for the Alice Tully Hall audience: “I adore my children, and I’m not going to give up acting.” And then, because she loves to, she sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”

Alec Baldwin Races Back to the Hamptons International Film Festival After his SNL Stint as Trump

 

Alec Baldwin does a spot on, hilarious Donald Trump, grimacing his way through his current vulgarity against women. That’s why SNL called him back to Manhattan this weekend even while he was hosting his baby, the Hamptons International Film Festival. By Sunday he was back east, at the annual chairman’s reception, addressing the crowd including Alex Gibney, Mariska Hargitay, Bob Balaban and many others. This is, after all, his first year as co-chairman. And now he’s announced that he wants to make a documentary about Peggy Siegal!

 

 

 

  

Kelli O’Hara Sings “If You Knew Susie” at Hope Rising Benefit

Best known for her leading roles in recent Broadway revivals The King and I, South Pacific, and Nice Work If You Can Get It, Kelli O’Hara sang at a dinner to benefit the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD) at the Pierre Hotel last week. Of course she sang “I Have Dreamed” and “I Could Have Danced All Night,” but her rendition of “If You Knew Susie,” not part of her repertoire, was bittersweet, as it was a personal tribute to Susan Newhouse, a vibrant philanthropist who succumbed to this disease, a form of dementia. Donald Newhouse presented the Susan Newhouse and SI Newhouse Award of Hope to David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discovery Communications.

Ava DuVernay’s The 13th: New York Film Festival Opening Night

This year the New York Film Festival opened with a documentary! Capturing a distinct Zeitgeist moment, in The 13th, Ava DuVernay limns a history of racism in America from the time of the 13^th Amendment to the present through the filter of prisons and policies of mass incarceration, seen as the equivalent or updated version of slavery. Her narrative is compelling, a clear-eyed history crafted from archival footage and interviews. Many are talking Oscar for Best Picture.

Dennis Hopper in The Last Film Festival: A Tribute

We are mid-festival season with the venerable New York Film Festival opened this week, and the Hamptons International Film Festival next, but one festival that spoofs them all is shown in an indie comedy, The Last Film Festival, co-written and directed by Linda Yellen. Starring Dennis Hopper, ultra handsome in his very last film, and the delicious Jacqueline Bisset, this film is a laugh-out-loud riot, a mash up in the manner of Robert Altman and Christopher Guest, even though an end note says the influence was 1946 Cannes, when Hitchcock’s Notorious was screened wrong reel first. But that is just one funny moment in The Last Film Festival, which also features raucous sex, a locker room catfight between older and younger actresses, and about everything you can do with a man in a wheelchair.