Gossip Central

Icarus on Netflix: Summerdocs’ Finale at Guild Hall

                            
It almost sounded like a good word about ISIS as filmmaker Bryan Fogel compared the tactics of the Russian Government with respect to whistleblowers, to the terrorists we know and fear at the final evening in the HIFF Summerdocs series at Guild Hall. He was saying that when they off people, ISIS steps up and takes responsibility, even bragging about their actions. Not so the Russians: when key individuals suddenly and inexplicably die of a heart attack, suspect foul play. They practice denial to the hilt. Fogel’s film Icarus, now on Netflix is about doping in sports, officially sanctioned by governments to get the win, specifically at the Olympics. Why do we even have them? The question is chilling about an institution that has always stood for excellence.

Eric Fischl’s Poster Celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the Hamptons International Film Festival

Eric Fischl might be the East End’s busiest artist: aside from painting, and showing his work, the North Haven-based painter is President of Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts, and active with his wife April Gornik in the effort to rebuild the Sag Harbor Cinema as a community film and arts center. When he was tapped to create a poster for this year’s Hamptons International Film Festival, now in its 25^th year, he immediately said yes: “I am honored to be part of it. This poster is my fourth,” the artist told me in a recent interview. “I did the first festival. That’s why they asked me.”

Photorealism at the Parrish: Old is New Again

Photorealism had its moment as a genre of painting in the 1970’s, right? The exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum, featuring paintings from every decade since then, gives ample proof that Photorealism has not gone away. Rather the exhibition “From Lens to Eye to Hand: Photorealism 1969 to Today,” provides vibrant work from many artists who use photographs in their capacity to render detail. Early practitioners like Don Eddy: “Wrecking Yard I” from 1971, and Audrey Flack’s “Shiva Blue,” (1972-3), “Petit Fours” from 1976, and “Hers” from 1977 show pioneering work in this style. Flack’s “Wheel of Fortune,” (1977-8) dominates one gallery. These sit comfortably near recent paintings by Yigal Ozeri: “Untitled; Territory” from 2012, “Untitled; Olya” from 2016, and “Untitled; Olya & Zuzanna” from 2017, or Don Jacot’s “Herald Square, 1936 (After Berenice Abbott)” from 2013, to name just a few.

Avedon’s America at Guild Hall: Another Country

A simple walk through Guild Hall’s exhibition “Avedon’s America” is an encounter with the familiar. Portraits from the world of pop culture: Hendrix, Joplin, Dylan, along with iconic fashion work like Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955, grace the walls. A favorite portrait of mine is the loving embrace of poets Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg from 1964, naked and showy, the former with his genitalia limp, just part of the candor from an era when such displays were just not done. So is it merely loving, or up yours to anyone uptight?

Casting As You Like It at Bay Street Theater: Expect the Unexpected

The third play of the Bay Street Theater season is Shakespeare’s As You Like It, featuring some theater royalty: Ellen Burstyn as the pensive Jacques and Andre de Shields, a show-stealer as Touchstone. They form the yin and yang of the bard’s comedy in this Sag Harbor staging under John Doyle’s direction, with Jacques pensive and pacing, and Touchstone colorful and cavorting. Burstyn is a most muted star in hat and tie. De Shields is his usual irrepressible in argyle socks and waistcoat. Of course the others in the ensemble for this musical version that will travel off-Broadway, to the CSC in the fall, are fine. But on the random Tuesday we attended, another was plucked from the first audience row, artist Eric Fishl, who as William with lines written out to read, formed a love triangle for the favors of Audrey, a saucy goatherd (Cass Morgan). Fishl’s wife April Gornik was cracking up, as her husband hates this sort of thing, she said. But Fishl was game, and handled his acting quite nicely, however sheepish he was. He does not win Audrey’s hand.

Author’s Night 2017: A Big Tent for All

On Author’s Night, the yearly festive fundraiser for the East Hampton library, writers sit in rows under an enormous tent, alphabetically, or so the signs say. This year, with books by Alec Baldwin (Nevertheless: A Memoir) and Ann Coulter (In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!), the tent could not have been big enough. By some feat of strategic seating, B and C were on opposite ends of the space, with each end drawing huge lines. Fortunately, fisticuffs avoided, the event remained politically correct, with each celebrated at his/her own private dinner following the group book signing.

Michael Moore on Broadway: A Message To Trump, America Isn’t Big Enough For Both of Us

Trump is Michael Moore’s #1 target in his Broadway debut, “The Terms of my Surrender.” “How did we get here,” he asks rhetorically. Forget all the pundits and prognosticators; it was just a year ago when we thought our president’s candidacy was merely a joke, or a publicity stunt, but Moore, with his ear to the ground of the heartland’s disenfranchised older white men foretold the outcome of our election. He tried to get Hillary to travel to places like Wisconsin, but his calls to Brooklyn headquarters never went through. And now deploying an arsenal of jokes, sight gags, SNL-worthy skits, Michael Moore lands at the Belasco Theater, to incite his audience to action, give hope, and most of all, to entertain. He’s even saved a box for the first family, should any Trump care to laugh, or just take him on.

Jeannette Walls On Fire: The Glass Castle Premieres

Back in the day, when Jeannette Walls was a glamorous gossip columnist for New York Magazine, sporting a French chignon and a white suit, she reported on Trump’s clandestine dates with Marla Maples when he was married to Ivana, but she had some secrets of her own. Her 2005 best seller, The Glass Castle, revealed a hillbilly upbringing with parents who were less than protective and nurturing. Let’s say, these disheveled “artists” were advocates of an alternative lifestyle in which they celebrated poverty, moved around in a junk heap of a car, one step away from authorities, where Jeannette and her siblings often went hungry as their father drank himself into a cruel stupor. But Rex Walls had big dreams; he wanted to build “a glass castle” of his own design. Now the popular memoir has been made into a fine, The Glass Castle,  film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton who made the movie Short Term 12, a game changer for the young actress who plays Jeannette in the new film, the Oscar winning Brie Larson.

Rory Kennedy and Surf God Laird Hamilton at Gurney’s Montauk for SummerDocs

Growing up Kennedy meant seeing people who push to greatness on a regular basis, documentarian Rory Kennedy said to a crowd of movie and surfing enthusiasts about her inspiration for documentary filmmaking. The occasion was a screening of her new film, Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton, part of the Hamptons International Film Festival SummerDocs, at Gurney’s Montauk. This, her third to be a SummerDocs feature after Ethel, about her mother, and Last Days in Viet Nam, a film about an athlete supreme in the sport of surfing seemed best suited for a screening in Montauk, and so the rooftop party site, looking onto the ocean became the perfect setting for a celebration of Hamilton’s expertise both on his surfboard, and off, crafting them, inventing new ways to fly in water.

Florence Fabricant Stirs the Pot at Guild Hall

When I spoke to longtime New York Times food and wine writer Florence Fabricant just before her entertaining “Stirring the Pot” series resumes its residency at Guild Hall this weekend, she was deep into writing her fall preview of new restaurants. The August interviews with chefs, she notes with pride, “gradually built an audience,” hitting the Zeitgeist fascination with all things food, and reflect her expertise and easy manner with celebrated guests. Her columns, “Off the Menu” and “Front Burner,” focus on eateries, opening, closing, or branching out: “A genuinely new restaurant is a “Front Burner” item,” she says about her column which also focuses on new products and events that are noteworthy: “I get a ton of pitches about flavored waters that will enhance your life. I say, if you are going to get thirsty, drink water.” A new vinegar or mustard does not cut it with Fabricant: “To catch my eye, it has to be astonishing.”