Sunday update: About 300 to 400 invited celebrities will pack the lobby of Barry Diller’s IAC building on West 18th St. and the West Side Highway around 6pm. I’m told a lot of people didn’t get invites and aren’t happy. (Ours was apparently lost in the mail.) This is all so odd. A proper Nichols memorial should have been held in a Broadway theater or at Lincoln Center. And why did it take a year to do anything at all?
EXCLUSIVE I told you some time ago about the planned memorial for beloved director Mike Nichols.
The memorial is set for this Sunday, November 8th. Nichols would have turned 84 this Friday. He died last year on November 19th.
Since I wrote about it, Elaine May has been added to the list of hosts that includes Barry Diller, Bryan Lourd, and Lorne Michaels.
Now I’m told that Monty Python’s Eric Idle and John Cleese will perform at the gathering. Idle and Cleese, of course, were associated with Mike through their Tony winning collaboration on the Broadway hit “Spamalot.” You can imagine the whole crowded guest list singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” at the end of the gathering.
Sunday’s event was originally going to be held in a restaurant. But I hear the guest list got out of hand, and now it’s in a bigger space. I’m reluctant to give out the location so I don’t cause a stampede. Guests should include Mike’s widow Diane Sawyer and friends like Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, Carly Simon, Nathan Lane, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman (from the movie “Closer”), Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and so on. There will be readings and other music.
All in all, it sounds like a nice celebration of Mike’s life. Bravo!
