Gossip Central

Martin Scorsese to Cate Blanchett at the New York Film Critics Circle Gala: Where Are You Going with This?

Joining the party at Tao Downtown on a screen, Martin Scorsese looked genuinely bewildered as he presented the Best Picture award to the movie Tar, noting the extraordinary performance of its star Cate Blanchett. As Lydia Tar, a genius orchestra conductor, Blanchett rages and purrs, at times in impeccable German. Scorsese has indeed worked with an actor or two but seemed awed over Blanchett: given she can do anything, and is, perhaps the actress of her generation: how far is she willing to go? Tar is on many “best” lists as it turns the cliché of the toxic male around, but the question is not how far Lydia Tar can go, but, for me, how far she has come.

The standout scene is when she returns home to Staten Island, as Linda. Here was the modest provincial place she had to flee to self-invent, to flourish in her music, and, horrifically, to nurture a monstrously warped ego. Discussing the film with its director Todd Field, I mention this resonant film moment. In writing it, he said, he was exploring, how does a talented person break into the elite cultural world of orchestras. He was thinking of Billy Strayhorn and how he fixed himself up to see Duke Ellington, into his idea of the cool Manhattan jazz society, and how everyone then looked to copy his style, his idea of how to be cool.

Remembering Aline Kominsky-Crumb

The Crumb documentary is ruining my life, complained Aline Kominsky-Crumb in 1993, as Terry Zwigoff’s biopic about Robert Crumb, her husband, gained acclaim, becoming a darling on the festival circuit. “Next thing you know, we’ll be invited to the Jerusalem Film Festival.” All of this drama was played out in a comic strip that appeared in The New Yorker magazine. Festival director Leah von Leer saw an opportunity and wrote to the Crumbs. “Your nightmare has come true. You are officially invited.”

Nominated for an academy award for best documentary feature, Crumb was a revealing look not only of this famous cartooning couple but Robert’s unusual family, capturing his highly eccentric and artistic brothers just before one committed suicide. Passionate for jazz, Robert had a huge record collection. Vinyl filled a room. Fearing an atmosphere of violence in their area of California, where gun ownership was de rigeuer, the Crumbs left for the south of France and lived in a multistoried house carved out of the rock on the banks of the Vidourle.

This much I knew when I encountered Robert and Aline in the lobby of our hotel in Jerusalem; I too came with a film, a documentary about the writer/composer Paul Bowles who lived in Tangier. “Did your records make it across the Atlantic?” I asked him as a way of saying hello. The Crumbs and my family—my husband Bob Salpeter, our two daughters, and my mother aged 73 and a survivor of Auschwitz --hung out. While Aline and I gabbed away getting to know one another—we had grown up in the New York City boroughs, finding our escape to Manhattan; we had ties to the Soho Weekly News-- Robert was helping my mother navigate the streets, gentle as could be. Aline dubbed her own mother Blabette, but genuinely liked mine grasping her spirituality.

Idris Elba Stars in Beast: An Old-Fashioned World Premiere at MoMA

No one will ever fall asleep at a screening of Beast, a new movie directed by Baltasar Kormakur and starring Idris Elba who goes mano a eh, mano with a rogue lion. Very Hemingway. Man against beast. He’s protecting his daughters in the wilds of Africa, a place that is at once beautiful with animals running free, and fraught with the dangers of poachers interfering with the natural law of the jungle. The Lion King this is not. 

You really can’t blame the lions—mangy, miserable creatures-- for being beasts after being hunted and raped, so to speak, by evil, greedy humans—certainly the film’s hands down villains. You might call this movie an adventure thriller with many of the trappings of a gasp-worthy horror story: a giant paw piercing the glass of a disabled jeep, a family cowering inside. A soundtrack that punctuates the suspenseful momentum. The family’s backstory creates a rich buffer for the formulaic genre. No beasts were hurt in the making of this movie. The fiercest among them were CGI.

Hamptons Journal: Longhouse’s Artistic Legacy as the East End Expands as a Destination for Fine Art

Wood stitched with wire does not sound like an ideal way to structure an outdoor shed, but that’s what Steven Ladd and his brother William Ladd used to create one of the masterful works showcased at this year’s Longhouse Benefit. As Steven guided visitors through this piece, open on both ends, he explained how he learned to sew using his grandmother’s sewing machine, and in fact, the upstate New York resident wore slacks and a shirt that he had made himself. It defied the imagination to think how that textile practice might be translated to their sculpture titled “Right Here, Right Now.” Similarly, Taiwanese artist Cheng Tsung Feng invited celebrants into an airy bamboo pavilion, “Fish Trap VI.” The spirit of Longhouse founder Jack Lenor Larsen could be felt in these works on this annual occasion with Robert Wilson, Nathan Lane, Alice Aycock, and many others celebrating his legacy at the best art party of the summer.

Newer art venues in Montauk flourish: The Ranch, the site of the famed Deep Hollow Ranch, where for years a summer concert would bring hoards to the East End, to be seated on haystacks and hear, for example, Paul Simon one year, The Eagles the next, and James Brown. Repurposed barns featured Frank Stella’s sculpture at the early part of summer. His larger pieces were spread out on the immense, now grassy field. Currently, in The West Barn, hangs, Jo Messer’s “Whale Tail,” a presentation of nine new paintings of women emphasizing limbs and gesture in incongruous position saturated in monochromatic palettes. The exhibition title comes from “a resurgent trend of hiking a g-string thong above the waistline as overt provocation.” Yes, provoke it does.

Lost Illusions: A Classy Take on a French Classic

The French can be vicious, bringing backstabbing to a fine art. Just look at les Liaisons Dangereuses. This year’s winner of seven Cesars, including Best Film, went to Xavier Giannoli’s adaptation of Honore Balzac’s Lost Illusions, a splendidly captivating romp through 19^th century Paris via the extravagant “illusions” of a young, determined, and talented poet, as his ideals are bought and sold by alluringly fancy vipers of the first order. 

Fresh from the rural fields, the ambitious newbie makes his way to the big city’s swank salons, taking journalism as a day job. Needless to say, the work consumes him. He falls for a beautiful kept woman/would be actress, a lover of exceptional skill, who is ill (a little “la Boheme”). Lucien appears to have it all—acclaim, love, all except title, --until he does not. The Devil exacts his price. At Lucien’s inevitable fall, editors, rivals, --everyone exclaims, “Well, who do you think you are?” His shifting identity is just one of his conceits. In the French court of commerce and public opinion, betrayal –and its sister, humiliation--rule.

Weaving such tales of the ups and downs of Fortune’s Wheel with finesse and finery—with cunning contrasts in temptation and scandal, the French are masters. This is great work for an ensemble of actors starting with Gerard Depardieu, Cecil de France, Jeanne Balibar, Xavier Dolan, Salome Dewaels, and more. As Lucien, Benjamin Voisin plays the poet as pouty, seductive, and naïve.

A classic story, classically made! Yes, the French are great at tales of vicious misfortune, and that’s why we love them. 

Vik Muniz at the Peter Marino Foundation: “When I See Garbage, I think of You”

Kicking off a series of intimate talks with artists, Brazilian painter/ collagist Vik Muniz captivated an art-loving crowd at the Peter Marino Foundation in Southampton. In conversation with Peter Marino, his daughter Isabelle Marino, and Bob Colacello. Muniz had an abundance of stories: Having grown up in a Sao Paolo favela, he learned to read when his grandmother taught him the shape of words at age 4. Baffled at his son’s vocation, his father first stepped into a gallery to see his son’s work and asked a patron, why did you buy this painting. Known for his unusual choice of art materials, such as chocolate syrup and peanut butter, he laughed asking everyone if they actually knew what goes into paint. Also famous for making art of junk, he is the main subject of Lucy Walker’s documentary, Wasteland, a story told at a giant dump site. Trying to pay him a compliment, someone said, “When I see garbage, I think of you.”

Perhaps the most outrageous story of all is how he funded his trip to America. Wearing a tuxedo, as he had just won an award, he came to the aid of a man who was being beaten to death, and was shot in the leg. The shooter paid his hospital costs, and more, to avoid involving the police. With many of his paintings adorning the space, a most special art venue, Muniz could reflect on having worked first in advertising. Comparisons with Andy Warhol were inevitable: his ideas about art production, making no distinction between commercial and fine art—such as the portraits Warhol was paid to do. As we all learned, Warhol used to draw his bullies. And flattered, they ended up protecting him.

JR’s Spontaneous Poetics: Paper and Glue

JR, French  graffiti artist and Agnes Varda collaborator on Faces, Places is infectious. His virus, a matchless enthusiasm for the creation of art, is impossible to describe: his energy is a force. Burroughs/Gysin had their Third Mind, Ouevres Croissees in French, a roadmap to artistic creation through collaboration, and JR inherits their spirit along with Varda’s. In his new documentary, Paper and Glue, he takes us to the US/Mexican wall, a California prison, the banlieu of Paris, favela of Rio, places we would never think to want to see. Infusing them with his je ne sais quoi, voila, they become the only places that matter, sites with superstars among the disenfranchised, the movie’s inscription from Varda: “If we opened people up, we’d find landscape.

His pal Bradley Cooper introduced the nomadic JR at the MoMA premiere this week, hosted by MSNBC whose filmmaking arm funded the film. Cooper, a bona fide movie star in awe, seemed happy to just to be in JR’s posse, a growing populace of fans and volunteers helping to build his outrageous installations. At the wall—yes that wall—someone even jokes about who is going to pay for it--JR erected a structure to paste a giant-sized photo of a small Mexican boy, waiting for the authorities to shut him down. Instead, they arrived and shared tacos. That’s just what you want to do with the irresistible JR. “Kevin,” a prison inmate sporting a swastika tattoo on his cheek, calls collect and JR picks up wherever he is. He sends Kevin a signed copy of Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Now, the prison system provides a tattoo removing system.

Hamptons Journal: Bay Street’s Camelot, Robert Longo at Guild Hall, Diana Frank at Tripoli Gallery

Legends of King Arthur and his court are having a moment: The Green Knight in theaters, and out east, Bay Street Theater’s production of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot --under the stars! Now a classic, its signature song “If Ever I Would Leave You” sends a particular nostalgic chill—ah love—especially for the musical theater genre that Bay Street does so well! Remember the glorious revival of Annie Get Your Gun, Bay Street’s very last production before the COVID shut down? Or the intimate production of Evita a year before? With Camelot--outdoors—BayStreet’s setting conveys less castle and more country as Camelot wields its special charms.

King Arthur in this imagining is a fair and just ruler, looking for equal representation in his governance, hence the knights’ round table. His liberal ideas come after he meets and weds Guenevere; at first, a dated gender bias marks the musical’s first act, especially brow-raising in our current discourse on the roles of men and women. The king’s attitudes progress when Sir Lancelot enters the story, as Arthur (Jeremy Kushnier), “Jen” (Britney Coleman), and “Lance” (Deven Kolluri) sing about good leadership, marriage, and loyalty, all performances solid and square. But, in this three-way expression of courtly love, a stylized representation of king and his knight/ knight and the queen --where the younger pair fall in love at their own peril, heat would be good. But that does not come till the second act.

Hamptons Journal: Graham Nash in Montauk/ Longhouse/ Chuck Manion’s Paintings at Duck Creek

OM—though that’s not my mantra. Dan and Maureen Cahill hosted an event for the David Lynch foundation to support veterans by providing them with TM—transcendental meditation-- life changing according to most practitioners, some of whom attended the concert and sit-down dinner on a gorgeous property between the old and new highways leading into the town of Montauk, with an ocean view, a large vegetable garden, and a chicken coop. 

Milling about on the manicured lawn, drinking wine, munching on canapes, attendees—among them Drew Barrymoore in an oversized hat pulled down (I took her for Julianne Moore at first, who really does live in Montauk) and Paul Jarrod Frank, MD, author of The Pro-Aging Playbook—(can’t miss the irony of that)--the night recalled Edenic times. Bob Roth led a meditation.

The Garden as Art: Longhouse/ The Return of Guild Hall’s Popular Tour

Textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen died in December of 2020, but Longhouse, the spectacular arts reserve off East Hampton’s Northwest Woods continues his tradition with an exhibition of his work. Influenced by his travels, the show is a glimpse into the adaptation of worldly visions into a uniquely American aesthetic. Of course, that’s only one reason to visit Longhouse, which features sculpture throughout, such as an iconic geodesic dome from Buckminster Fuller and Yoko Ono’s “Wishing Tree.” And what about the gardens, and arches of bright baby pink roses!!!!

Guild Hall returned to its tradition, “The Garden as Art” tour featuring artists’ work on the grounds of their East End sanctuaries. I’d like to tell you that Tony Ingrao and Randy Kemper’s gorgeous grounds with its statuary and expert landscaping was my favorite. Or the artist Ross Bleckner’s studio left open for all to see, particularly showcasing the paintings so influenced by gardens. The “best” distinction goes to Tucker Marder who took visitors around his “Folly Tree Arboretum,” speaking of each tree and its specific ecological distinction: the “Moon Tree,” for example, a clone of a Sycamore that went to the moon as a seed with astronaut Stuart Roosa in 1971 as part of the Apollo 14 mission.