Gossip Central

Troilus and Cressida in the Park: Manly Men Make War Not Love

Projectile blood is just one spectacle in Shakespeare’s problem play, Troilus and Cressida, as staged at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, a fine Public Theater production directed by Daniel Sullivan. Written around the same time the bard penned his most famous tragedy Hamlet in 1602, T&C features warriors waging battle in the Trojan War, and as in Hamlet, the play asks the question, what makes a man? In Hamlet, after the hero’s death, Fortinbras, loosely translated as a French “strong in arms,” takes over. Might makes right, right? The more obscure T&C’s message is more muddled: Strong arms do not necessarily make for good men. The high body count is not worth the loss. And love, as in the kind young Troilus has for Cressida, does not elevate. In modern dress, and performed by an exceptional cast, including John Glover, Corey Stoll, John Douglas Thompson, Max Casella for his comic relief, and with a hunky Bill Heck as Hector and Andrew Burnap as his younger brother Troilus, this male ensemble shows men doing what men do.

Logan Lerman and Sarah Gadon in James Schamus’ Indignation

Bespectacled and bowtied, James Schamus introduced his movie, Indignation, his directorial debut from Philip Roth’s novel, at MoMA, with the observation that a premiere at MoMA makes up for not having had a bar mitzvah. Hold that Jewish joke. In fact, the film starts with a brief image of war, and a Jewish funeral, a shiva—you can tell by the smoked fish at the buffet—for a fallen soldier. The grieving family is related to the Messners, the Newark butchers at the story’s heart, and their only son Marcus who goes off to college in Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson’s fictional domain) where he falls hopelessly in love with a blond shiksa, Olivia Hutton, from a divorced family with a penchant for oral sex and self destruction.

Alec Baldwin: “I Crave the Movie Elephant” at HIFF SummerDocs Screening

One of the many revelations in Jeff Feuerzeig’s riveting documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story, was that Laura Albert, the mastermind behind her fictive persona JT LeRoy, an author of some renown, also worked with director Gus Van Sant on his 2003 Elephant, a movie of a Columbine-like mass shooting at a school. She was commissioned to write the script, which was then discarded, the movie retaining only the image of a fat girl in the library, the shooter’s first victim. In the post-screening Q&A at Guild Hall for the Hamptons International Film Festival’s SummerDoc series, Alec Baldwin enthused about Elephant, a coincidence for him to realize the connection to Laura Albert.

Patti Smith and Marianne Faithfull Take in “The Beat Generation” at Centre Pompidou: Hipsters on the Continent

What is beat? From down and out through saintly beatitudes, beat is an attitude. As a literary movement, the Beat Generation is an American phenomenon, but every geographic area that experienced it, takes ownership, and the French are no different. In Paris, at Centre Pompidou’s 6^th floor neighboring a retrospective of Paul Klee, a vast exhibition devoted to the culture of The Beat Generation --with principals Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg-- provides essential visual and auditory material for an understanding of this literati’s global influence.

What Price Kerouac? “The Joan Anderson Letter” Auctioned at Christie’s

Two Joans were on display at Christie’s on June 16, one was the much-missed Joan Rivers with a sampling of her sequined gowns adorning mannequins in the auction house entrance, going on the block the following day. The other was the famed subject of a 1950 letter to Jack Kerouac from his pal, Neal Cassady, long thought lost. You may have read about it 18 months ago, when Jean Spinosa found the letter among her father’s papers in Oakland, California. Then came a bit of legal wrangling among Cassady’s heirs, the Kerouac estate, and the letter’s finder. Because Kerouac claimed this letter was inspiration to his spontaneous prose, the letter has entered legend. Cassady, famed for fast driving and cocksmanship, met Joan Anderson on a Greyhound bus, convincing her to make it with him, the writing fast, rambling, and rhapsodic. Now on display on the auction floor, with only the first of 16-pages showing, the letter held some surprises.

Anderson Cooper’s Anxiety of Influence: Gloria Vanderbilt

Depending on what era formed you, you can relate to a piece of Gloria Vanderbilt. If you are old enough, it’s the “Poor Little Rich Girl” headlines, or maybe it’s her dating Frank Sinatra, or the designer jeans with the swan logo. Women wore her name across their derrieres. She’s lived every era fully, and as her son Anderson Cooper maintains, she’s still looking for the next great love, just around the corner. Anything can happen, of course, but at 92 no one is taking chances: Mother and son have co-authored a book, The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss. Vanderbilt will have a show of her art, paintings, drawings and dream boxes, and Cooper and Vanderbilt star in a documentary by Liz Garbus called Nothing Left Unsaid, which brings her complicated story line into a coherent narrative. To air this weekend on HBO, Nothing Left Unsaid is a portrait of an American original. Introducing at the Time Warner Center, HBO’s Sheila Nevins said, “It’s beautiful. And if I haven’t called all my films beautiful, it’s too bad. This one really is.”

David Bowie: In Memoriam

I was a huge Bowie fan back in day, which made it really strange that I did not recognize him when I met him backstage at The Bottom Line during a Steve Reich and his 18 Musicians concert. This light haired, well-groomed guy stood there in an argyle vest and pegged pants. Maybe I was clueless because he wasn’t wearing lipstick or glitter. The preppie guy and I talked about the lizard on top of the Lone Star Café at 13^th Street and 5^th Avenue very near home for me in the West Village. As we chatted, a room full of people leaned in. I could feel the heat of their bodies and curiosity. What were we talking about, rapt and oblivious to them?

Sting: Variations on The Last Ship

A master storyteller in the tradition of medieval balladeers, Sting recounted a childhood experience at a celebration this week of his The Last Ship from the River of the Northern City, a handcrafted boxed edition of his Last Ship lyrics with woodcuts by “luminist” painter Stephen Hannock, published by Two Ponds Press. Growing up in his Northern English city of Newcastle, near Scotland and water, Sting used to attend official ship christenings. Because dignitaries and royals would attend too, his mother would dress him in Sunday best, attire he hated. Once he saw the queen there, and in a moment fantasized that they had made eye contact, a personal connection. He saw the fancy automobile in which she arrived and imagined a different life from the one he was clearly destined for. And now of course he lives in Manhattan. He pointed to the spectacular panorama from the 44^th floor of the Hearst Building, and, accompanying himself on guitar, sang: “Dead Man’s Boots,” “The Night the Pugilist Learned to Dance,” and “The Last Ship.”

Hamptons Journal: Food Glorious Food

Out on Eastern Long Island, real food and real estate rule, somebody who knows recently told me. This wisdom was proven at a special dinner at the Pollock-Krasner House on the waterfront Springs site where the artist couple lived, and at Guild Hall’s annual Garden as Art tour featuring vegetable gardens at several spectacular estates. On a late August Thursday chef Michael Rozzi from East Hampton’s 1770 House, riffed on the recipes found in Robyn Lea’s Dinner with Jackson Pollock (Assouline).Taking the steps for the abstract expressionist’s clam pie, he put the filling in a clam shell, like a baked clam, and served it along with Pollock’s home baked white bread spread with salmon to a dozen guests seated around the table Lee Krasner acquired to host Jackson’s dealers and collectors, a paint splattered tablecloth protecting the oak. Arguably, wildly delicious borscht was the highlight of the menu. Helen Harrison, director for the house and study center, led a tour up the stairs to a room used by Krasner as a painting space for a decade, with its view to Accabonac Creek. As a survival tactic for her marriage, Lee, who could not cook, learned the recipes of Jackson’s mother, Stella Mae McClure Pollock, and entertained friends with him on that inspiring site.

Authors Night 2015: Cooks, Cookbooks, and Others

High profile authors like Nelson DeMille, Dick Cavett and Dr. Ruth Westheimer had stacks of books to sell under the Authors Night tent. Not surprising, the longest line was for author Ed Burns, yes that Ed Burns. The cover of this week’s Hamptons Magazine, creator of a new television series, Public Morals, for TNT, and author of the memoir, Independent Ed: Inside a Career of Big Dreams, Little Movies, and the Twelve Best Days of my Life, the actor was prime for chats and selfies, and the crowd was having it all.

Then there were the books about the famous: David Browne’s So Many Roads: The Life and Times of The Grateful Dead, and Hope: Entertainer of the Century, Richard Zoglin’s biography of Bob Hope. As writers and their fans moved on to private dinners, Zoglin who would be a guest at Patti Kenner’s with Dr. Ruth told me he had fantasies of discussing Hope’s sex life with the famed pint-sized therapist. The piles of books dwindled.