Gossip Central

Rolling Thunder Revue on Netflix, and More: Allen Ginsberg Never Gets Old

Just before his death in 1997, Allen Ginsberg wrote to President Bill Clinton advising him that just in case he was going to name an American poet laureate, this would be a good time to honor him. As we know, that never happened. But look around: Allen, over 20 years after his death, is everywhere. In Martin Scorsese’s documentary of Bob Dylan’s tour, Rolling Thunder Revue on Netflix, the poet is named “The Oracle at Delphi,” giving him some classic, other-worldly stature. Seated Buddha-style he lends a religious benediction to a rock and roll tour that features Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, Anne Waldman, Ronnie Blakely, and others. Dylan’s great music is of course the star, but Allen exercises his chops. A highlight of the tour that starts in 1975 is a visit to fellow poet Jack Kerouac’s grave, near his birth home in Lowell, Massachusetts. Only recently dead since 1969, Kerouac may have enjoyed Ginsberg and Dylan cavorting and reciting from “Mexico City Blues” and otherwise paying homage to the dead beat.

It’s Me, Sylvia: Legendary Actress Sylvia Miles Remembered

 Sylvia Miles passed away today at 94. She always said she would not leave this earth without her academy award but sad, to report, that she did. A two-time nominee for just minutes of screen time in Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Farewell My Lovely (1975), Sylvia was a New York actress who would not relocate to Hollywood for greater fame and fortune, or better roles. Just last month MoMA featured the work of Abel Ferrara: in his Go Go Tales (2007), Sylvia Miles wears a Chanelesque jacket, as she performed opposite Burt Young, landlords to a downtown dance club run by Willem Dafoe. The movie ends with her sweet rendition of “Bed, Bath, and Beyond,” because the big store was going to replace the edgy pole dancing venue. Ah, gentrification. Sylvia made much of that jacket and the way it defined her character. I am so happy that she urged me to the screening, so I could see her in action from a bygone time, even if only in a movie. She wanted me to report any press to her, in the event that attention was paid.

Designing Women in its 20th Year: The Look of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Game of Thrones, 60 Minutes

Photo: Regina Weinreich

The makeup, hair people and costumers behind the scenes rarely get their due attention, but for 20 years, New York Women in Film and Television, has been celebrating them. While women are under represented in media, and often paid less than men doing the same jobs, makeup artists, hair stylists, and costume designers enjoy a distinct parity, even if they are not as publicly visible. As comedian Zainab Johnson, host of last evening’s star-studded event at the Directors Guild Theater pointed out, “Women can do anything.” Everyone in this room could laugh at how banal that sounded.

Piranhas Opens Film at Lincoln Center’s Festival of New Italian Cinema

Open Roads, an annual festival of new Italian cinema, kicked off this week at Film at Lincoln Center with a screening of Piranhas, directed by Claudio Giovannesi. Introducing his film, Giovannesi recalled having begun the script two years ago in New York, when he met with the novelist Roberto Saviano, the famed author of Gomorrah, about Neapolitan mobsters; their script for Piranhas won the Silver Bear in Berlin.

Remembering Halston in a New Documentary

Fashion designer Halston was a presence in Montauk in the heady 1970’s, renting from Andy Warhol on an oceanfront property east of town. One of the joys of Frederic Tcheng’s documentary Halston, produced by Roland Ballester, is seeing Halston at leisure with family seaside. Like Warhol’s estate, co-owned by filmmaker Paul Morrissey, Halston eventually went corporate, taking his Bergdorf Goodman pedigree to the masses in an ill-advised deal with J.C. Penney. For Halson’s A-list career, this was the beginning of a down journey. Yes, all of that is explained in the film, in the cocaine fueled, wild parties seen in archival footage. Using interviews with Pat Cleveland and Joel Schumacher, Halston’s unique moment in fashion is illuminated. His models, known as the Halstonettes, worshipped him. Looking movie star elegant, hair slicked back, impeccably groomed, he was in his heart, a Midwesterner, and wished most of all to re-establish his American roots.

When They See Us: Black Lives Interrupted on Netflix

Selma director Ava DuVernay’s epic mini-series, When They See Us, to stream on Netflix, about a sensational case of racism and ill-justice reaching back to the late 1980’s, premiered at the Apollo Theater this week. Remember “wilding,” and five black teenagers convicted of a brutal rape of a jogger in Central Park, and their later exoneration? This is that story. Back in the day, the focus was on the hideous violence of the crime, and the young white woman, the victim, left to die. The media went berserk over “wilding,” teens looking to rob and beat innocent people, just for fun. Behind all of this was a seriously beaten woman who became a cause celebre, and some police officials trying to make their name. Today, in the #metoo era, and a time when a glaring light shines on the plight of blacks murdered by authorities, the case plays very differently. And that could be reason enough to tune in to this four-part series, but that’s not all. Especially when you know where it’s going, When They See Us is riveting, a must-see event.

Skin, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Charlie Says: Bad Boys at the Tribeca Film Festival

Tattoo sporting white supremacists make skin crawl, almost as much as the violence perpetrated in the name of hate. Expanded from an Academy Award winning short, Guy Nattiv’s Skin, a feature at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, stars a scary Jamie Bell, in over his head with a homeland terrorist “family.” Dad is Bill Camp, mom Shareen, a woman so smooth as she recruits new warriors into their hate group, offering sandwiches and hugs to runaways, you can see why Bryon could be so gulled, until he meets a family offering the dream of a “normal” life. Still, with his facial tats, he could never pass. And besides, they’d never let him leave.

Kenneth Branagh’s All is True Premieres: Shakespeare Takes Center Screen

Portraying his beloved Shakespeare at last, Kenneth Branagh, both director and star, imagines the bard’s life in his final years. “He was after all a man,” proclaimed Branagh, introducing his new film, All is True, to a Broadway elite at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation: The Robin Willians Center for an intimate premiere. The film’s idea: after the famous Globe theater burned down, Shakespeare returned to his birth home, Stratford-on-Avon, to his wife Anne Hathaway (Judi Dench), and children. There, he does what any man would do, damage control to redeem himself for his long absence, talk about his legacy with the Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen), and garden. This is known: both his daughters were engaged in scandals, and his son died mysteriously. Women were unschooled, and any impropriety would lead to a witch-hunt. There is enough drama, and family dysfunction, in other words, to enliven the creative chops of screenwriter Ben Elton for this gorgeously made period piece!

Abel Ferrara Rocks Out at MoMA

Photo: Regina Weinreich

Celebrating a retrospective at MoMA, cult filmmaker Abel Ferrara showed his music chops. The museum lobby, its platform facing the garden became a stage for Ferrara’s long time friends and collaborators Paul Hipp and Joe Delia, and some surprise vocalists Willem Dafoe, Gretchen Mol among them. Mol’s duet with Ferrara on guitar for “Bebopalula” and “Walk on the Wild Side,” homage to the late great Lou Reed, sent chills through the downtown art crowd including Debbie Harry, Julian Schnabel and Louise Kugelberg, Marla Hanson; many have worked with Ferrara. This wild party, hosted by producers Annie and Ed Pressman, was most certainly a throwback to headier times.

Celebrating 50 with Film at Lincoln Center: What’s in a Name?

Purple over orange is always a good color choice, regal and elegant. The Film Society of Lincoln Center has had a makeover; Film at Lincoln Center reflects a shift in name and logo hue. Celebrating its 50th birthday this week, the yearly gala honored, not one career as in its traditional Chaplin Awards, but rather its decades long life; the former “society’ screened clips of its five decades as a premiere film venue. Feting the art of filmmaking, they introduced the work of such mega talents as Bunuel, Bertolucci, Truffaut, Varda, Denis, Kurasawa, among many other directors. Personal tributes from a film world elite including Tilda Swinton, Pedro Almodovar, Martin Scorsese, Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan, and many others who had shown work there, illustrated how Lincoln Center broke boundaries, crossing geography, gender, and generations. In a backhanded compliment, contrarian John Waters said, at Lincoln Center, if you don’t see the films they anoint into their canon, the films they want you to see, you will go to film Hell. With his signature smirk, he walked off the stage. Funny how breaking barriers can go mainstream.