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.

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.

Tigerland on Discovery Channel: “Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright”

When filmmaker Ross Kauffman pitched the idea for Tigerland, his latest documentary film to air on the Discovery Channel, he proclaimed to producers, including Fisher Stevens, that he did not want to make another The Cove, fine as it was, another doc about the poaching of animals in the wild. Oops, Stevens had produced the Oscar-winning film about the endangered dolphins. Kauffman got the job anyway. Tigerland does address the diminution of the world’s tiger population, now only about 3400 in the wild, but as is this documentarian’s special skill, he gives the story a human face, focusing on the individuals, one in India, another in Russia, key figures who do the work of keeping the tiger species alive.

Woman’s Day Red Dress Awards: Seeing Red on Heart Disease

“I see a sea of red,” became the cliché of the night at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room for the Woman’s Day Red Dress Awards. Indeed, red was encouraged for stars on the red carpet, Angela Bassett, Susan Lucci, and everyone else, and it seemed a giant homage to Valentine’s Day and the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration all wrapped in one. But the unifying image was the heart, meaning heart health for women. Lucci, the queen of soap operas, told a story of being the picture of health and suddenly feeling pressure in her chest in October, averting a heart attack. Bassett, the queenly Ramonda in Black Panther, lost her mother in 2014 to heart disease. She wanted to create awareness for the link between Type 2 Diabetes and heart disease. Each speaker, and including doctors Dr. Sharon Hays and Mary N. Walsh, had a message: these episodes are preventable.

Song of Parkland: Surviving the Valentine’s Day Massacre

When we ran into Melody Herzfeld at the Tony Awards, she seemed stunned at the place history had taken her. This week at a special screening of Song of Parkland, an HBO documentary directed by Amy Schatz, she had her Tony Award by her side, still stunned, and feeling guilty. She would have preferred a prize for merit, she said. Instead she was honored for her heroism in a tragedy, coolly ushering 65 students into a back storeroom closet for two hours as a gunman murdered 17 at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where she taught drama. At HBO, dozens of her former students attested to her epic qualities as a teacher. While she was not falsely modest, part of her charm is a self-effacing humor worthy of Joan Rivers. Then again, as she told us at the Tony’s, she was from these parts, from New Jersey.

Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists on HBO: Virile Prose and the Value of Truth

There aren’t any more Breslins or Hamills, exemplars of a masculine New York postwar street journalism. Now these superstars of newsroom culture star in a state of the art documentary, Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists, to air this week on HBO. At a star-studded premiere at the Time Warner Center with dinner at Porterhouse, they were celebrated in high style—Jimmy Breslin died in 2017, and a frail Pete Hamill could not attend-- even as the world they brought to life feels like a near forgotten memory of a bygone era.

Season Two of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Premieres: Nostalgia in Pink

Spoiler alert: At Season Two’s start of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Mrs. Maisel’s marriage is still in turmoil. Everyone glued to this thoroughly entertaining Amazon Prime series is familiar with the domestic impasse, a source of angst for the couple, and humor for everyone else. Why can’t two people deeply in love be together?

As episode 1 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel opens, our heroine, the divine Rachel Brosnahan, forced to take odd jobs, answers phones at one of those switchboards, moving about on a swivel chair. Think Judy Holliday in Bells Are Ringing. And then she is summoned home. Before you can say Ooh La La, our Midge is in Paris with her dad, the amazing Tony Shaloub, for some perfectly pitched father-daughter banter, and neither one knows French. Ever resourceful, Midge manages to do her act even there, finding an expat New Yorker at a drag show to translate her weepy story of failed marriage. Get ready to sob in hysteria.

Variety and The History Channel Host the Second Annual Salute to Service: Honoring Those Who Stand Up

“Thank you for your service is not enough,” said Montel Williams, a US Navy veteran, who also said, “I promised not to cry” as he accepted his award at the 2^nd annual Salute to Service luncheon hosted by Variety and The History Channel at Cipriani 25 Broadway. Ken Fisher, a friend who had accompanied Williams to Dover to meet with Gold Star families, introduced him as a “veteran’s veteran.” Having recently suffered a massive stroke, Williams showed up anyway, for veterans, and was teary-eyed reminding everyone to do more. They may be home, he said, but “their service is not over.”