Gossip Central

Secrets of the Whales Premieres in Time for Earth Day

Introducing the National Geographic series at a virtual premiere, to stream on Disney +, part of a weeklong celebration of Earth Day, the actress Sigourney Weaver, found the secrets of whales “astonishing.” What is truly astonishing is how intimate National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry becomes with the whales, learning their “secrets.” It is no spoiler to reveal them: Whales have culture. Using the tag line: they play, they mourn, they are just like us, National Geographic promotes the idea of empathy for another species—big time!

The filming of this epic adventure took three years. Amazing how much humans can bond with their fellow mammals in that time, in many locations: Norway, Antarctica, Dominica, St. Lawrence, New Zealand, the South Pacific, to name a few of the spectacular locations. We were rapt for two hours: one Orca attempted to feed fin and wet suit clad Skerry, undersea camera in hand, who quipped, perhaps she was thinking he was undernourished. She’d picked up a stingray, and knew to turn it upside down to a sleep mode to better serve him for dinner. Yes, survival is key, and that wisdom is handed down through elder females.

Clive Davis at 90

“The thing about turning 90,” quipped music impresario Clive Davis, “is I realized, last year I was 89.” The occasion was a birthday dinner at The River Café that was also a celebration of the Clive Davis Institute at New York University, an educational venue that also features studios where young artists can record their work. The pre-dinner opening of an exhibition of Davis’ archive showed off his gold and platinum records and a wall of artists Davis represented at Columbia, later Arista, J Records, and SONY: Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Simon & Garfunkel, Barry Manilow, and so many more in Davis’ stellar career spanning six decades. Famously, Davis signed Janis Joplin after hearing her perform at Monterey back in the day. In one vitrine with personal correspondence a visitor can see invitations to concerts, such as one, to a supper at Davis’ home for Joplin following a performance at Madison Square Garden. Clive Davis has an ear. Has---he is still going strong.

 

Celebrating Guild Hall at Cipriani 42 Street

Many revelers at this week’s Guild Hall winter gala remembered that before Covid locked everyone down, they were celebrating the premiere East Hampton cultural institution at its 2020 annual gala. And while much has changed in these two years—the venue was now the cavernous Cipriani 42^nd Street—and, the 2022 honorees were Board Chair Marty Cohen and Michele Cohen without the customary Academy of the Arts recipients—the mood was exuberant, as this huge, yet intimate event of East End neighbors chatting, catching up has not lost any of its warmth. Academy president Eric Fishl recalled that in that pre-pandemic limbo, no one knew whether to fist or elbow bump but preferred to kick one another in the ankles. All these dressed up people kicking the s__t out of each other, he laughed.

Renee Zellweger in The Thing About Pam at the Whitby Hotel

Her spindly legs over sky high heels, Renee Zellweger, both star and a producer on NBC’s series The Thing About Pam, commanded the stage at the Whitby Hotel this week after a screening of the first two episodes of the 6-part series. Based on a true-life crime podcast, already well known, about a 2011 murder in small-town Troy, Missouri, The Thing About Pam is so tongue-in-cheek, you have to laugh at the shenanigans of bungling law enforcement and grieving citizens, as a beloved wife and mom—and daughter—is found dead of multiple knife wounds in her living room. The two-time Academy Award winning actress plays Pam, hardly recognizable with her pudgy face and physique, her legs like elephant trunks, who slurps endlessly on a giant sugary beverage further sweetened with cherry syrup. The camera can’t get enough of her fat face and squinty eyes as she figures out her next shady moves.

Girl Power: My Brilliant Friend, season 3 on HBO

Addiction to the HBO series My Brilliant Friend is second only to a passion for the source, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. That’s why, writing about the eight episodes of season 3, I do not fear spoilers. Faithful to the literature—in fact Ferrante is listed among the script writers—the series follows friends Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco) and Lila (Gaia Girace) from childhood on, with season 3 the period of young adulthood: each has been married; Lila has a son, Lenu, 2 girls. Proud to a fault, and difficult to comprehend, Lila works in Bruno’s meatpacking plant, a harrowing flesh factory on every level. Lenu, now a famous novelist living in Florence seems to have it all. Something, however, is seriously missing. Their domestic lives play out against blistering violence in Naples, with friends beaten and raped. Yet all the while, their relationship endures, at times through enormous bouts of envy, irritation, ambivalence. Who among us can’t relate?

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Still Marvelous in Season Four

She’s baaack! Expect funny throughout The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season four, starting with a strip tease in a taxi. No, it’s not what you think. Miriam Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) is acting out, not working, mind you. The opposite of work. She’s been fired from a European tour, and with Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein), the agent (who dresses like she’s refereeing prize fights), beside her, she’s having a tantrum, ripping off her beautifully coordinated hat and throwing it out the window of the cab as she’s making her way back into the city. Next comes the jacket, the skirt. Susie is wailing, representing us all bemoaning this untoward episode, equal parts astonishing and hilarious. We all know these clothes are much lauded --the work of costume designer Donna Zakowska who, in real life, has been feted at the White House and beyond for her to-die-for swing coats. “Stop, that goes with the outfit,” screams Susie before they find the one remedy for what ails our Midge—the comedy stage.

The Gilded Age on HBO: Oh, the vulgarity of the rich in America!

Mountains of gorgeous food: lobsters, roasted meats, salads, caviar. The eye filling opulence of Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey follow up series, The Gilded Age on HBO more than sates any desire for decadence. Forget Stanford White’s magnificent design for the newly completed Russell mansion on turn of the century Fifth Avenue; nothing says conspicuous consumption more than the spread Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) hoped would lure the city’s elite to her home to solidify friendships in wealth. Not surprisingly, snobbery does not work that way. No one shows up. Any readers of the novels of Henry James and Edith Wharton would know how the hierarchies among the rich work, their laws finite. Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijn looks her chiseled nose down on her neighbors, nailing the divide between Old New York and New. And viewers are left to look on hungrily at the grandeur, and guffaw at the Russell’s servants’ dumping amply piled silver platters into garbage bins.

Bridget Everett Stars in HBO’s Somebody Somewhere: The Heart of Manhattan, Kansas

First aware of Bridget Everett as a mother in Patti Cake$, an indie hit of 2017, I met her on two occasions: she was a flamboyant speaker at the Nantucket Film Festival that year receiving an award. Trust me, you never want to follow her onstage. Second, at the Athena Film Festival, she attended with her pal Murray Hill, so named for the Manhattan, NYC neighborhood. Both make a big impression, HUGE, and now you can see for yourself as Everett stars in an HBO series, Somebody Somewhere, with Hill in a supporting role, directed by Robert Cohen and Jay Duplass. So full of heart, I would say, the series is a gift for Valentine’s Day.

Rural America is a foreign country to me, but Manhattan, Kansas is both strange and ironic given that you cannot imagine a place more remote from Manhattan, New York, ground zero for misfits seeking personal expression. And guess what, looks like Bridget Everett feels the same way. She’s from there, and as Executive Producer of the series featuring autobiographical details from her life, she’s crafted this location, and at least fictionally, finds a voice there. Manhattan, Kansas is to Bridget Everett as Baltimore is to John Waters.

Candace Bushnell Dares to Ask: Is There Still Sex in the City?

The night before the HBO series she spawned reincarnated as And Just Like That at MoMA, Candace Bushnell signals, she has moved on. At the Daryl Roth Theater, she struts across a stage fitted with a hot pink couch and shelves lined with Manolos, recounting a stellar career as columnist, coming from Connecticut, modest suitcase in hand, sleeping around. This “having sex like a man” becomes material, and quite explicit. If you are a fan of Sex & the City, you know what I mean. Miraculously, in her tour de force hour and a half one-woman show—with the exception of a cameo by two dogs, the words “penis” and “vagina” are uttered once each, as Bushnell poses the question, Is There Still Sex in the City? Phone in hand, she converses with her Samantha, her Miranda, and her Charlotte, paragons of wisdom, as she navigates her rise as writer, all the while dumped by lovers including her ballet dancer husband. The men she mentions do not fare well—even her supportive father somehow lets her know her flat chest will get her nowhere in love. An exception is Darren Star, the series showrunner who attended the opening. I caught up with him over a gargantuan urn of guacamole at the Rosa Mexicana afterparty where a Covid test was now the new condom: “Yes, she got it right. She’s honest about Sex & the City and how we got it made. She would not have invited me if she was going to trash me.”

Joel Coen’s Tragedy of Macbeth Opens the NYFF: Let It Come Down

As a tragic hero, a deeply flawed man, Denzel Washington was perfect for the role of Macbeth. He’d done downcast/larger-than-life before, say, in August Wilson’s Fences, and now in Joel Coen’s new film that opened the new season’s New York Film Festival, his Macbeth oozes Shakespeare’s eternal wisdom: It’s not that good to be king.

When Coen was asked whether Washington was his first choice for the role, his producer, Lady Macbeth herself, Frances McDormand said, “There’s no list for Macbeth. You must be born to it.” Seated between Coen and Washington, her two husbands so to speak, in life and in tragedy, on the Walter Reade Theater stage for a post-screening press conference, she professed to have instigated the project, having slept walked in Lady Macbeth’s shoes since she was 14. While there have been many Macbeths through the centuries, this one, in sumptuous and austere black & white most closely follows Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight, and yet Roman Polanski’s was referenced as well. Discussing the age of this murderous couple, the usual idea is to make them young and ambitious. McDormand and Washington make them older, passed over by the king, and wanting to get their due. We can attest to that feeling, Frances and Denzel, revel in a private joke.

Alessandro Nivola’s Breakthrough in The Many Saints of Newark

How was Tony Soprano “made?” That’s the through line for the long-awaited prequel to HBO’s Sopranos series, The Many Saints of Newark. At a stellar premiere this week at the Beacon Theater, Robert DeNiro, who knows a thing or two about mobsters, along with Tribeca Film Festival partner Jane Rosenthal—greeted a packed, masked house of the show’s creators, veteran actors, as well as devotees dressed to kill. As creator David Chase introduced the superb cast, much hooting and shouting, I love you, rang out--well, this was a celebration. With no room for this feature to tank—instead, it radiated excellence intertwining the Soprano’s trademark violence with values of the family kind.

Tony (a wonderful Michael Gandolfini trying on his late, great father’s shoes) is just a kid here, troubled but smart, a born leader, taking notes from a variety of paternal figures, especially his uncle Dickie Moltisanti played with psychotic charm and menace by Alessandro Nivola. You have never seen this actor this good, turning from lover to murderer on a proverbial dime. At the Tavern on the Green afterparty, Vera Farmiga, Tony’s mother Livia in the film, could not stop talking about Sandro, how she could not take her eyes off his every gesture. She, in turn, transformed to play the Soprano matriarch, brings the mob wives’ domineering submissiveness to new levels of humor and delight. John Magaro as Silvio Dante gets a big laugh as we see him walk that walk. Billy Magnusson as Paulie Walnuts frets over the blood stains on a new jacket as he tortures, making a mess using a drill. They almost got Corey Stoll as Uncle Junior to sing. With its sly humor and nod to the popular, game changing series, the movie creates its own universe—this is not Philip Roth’s Newark.