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We are drawing closer to the most important wedding since Kim Kardashian married…everyone.
Tomorrow is the date for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s $20 million extravaganza at Madison Square Garden. The tacky event’s theme is “Look at me,” with guests totaling 1,000 at the world’s most famous venue in the center of the biggest city in America.
Also, it will be one hundred and twenty five degrees.
But wait — I can tell you that speculation about Stevie Nicks singing something at the wedding is confirmed.
Also, Este Haim, of the sister group HAIM, is going to perform. Haim and Nicks are pals, and may sing together, I am told.
Este could bring up her sisters. Taylor and Este are beste friends, you know. Taylor and Stevie attended Este’s wedding back on New Year’s Eve.
Este, you know, is also an actress, appearing in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” and briefly in “One Battle After Another.”
I don’t really understand the HAIM career. Their biggest hit, “The Wire,” was from 2013. They don’t really have a breakout hit. It’s surprising they don’t. Maybe they should record one of Taylor’s songs.
Anyway, sounds like fun. And good for Stevie: you must have younger friends as you age. These girls are her spiritual children!
PS Send the video to me at showbiz411@gmail.com. All confidential.
Donald Trump has posted an AI video in which he’s a “Doctor” — ha ha — treating patients for not liking him.
The “patients” are his enemies — like Rosie O’Donnell, Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts, John Leguizamo, etc.
The AI is very bad. The celebrities he thinks he’s mocking couldn’t be more inauthentic looking.
But this is how the president of the United States is celebrating our nation’s 250th birthday.The forefathers are rolling in their graves. They could never have envisioned this is how things would be back when they fought to create this country.
On the upside, at least he’s not sleeping in the video.
The two people who climbed to the top of the Empire State Building today — I wasn’t surprised when I heard about it during this afternoon’s Yankees game. (Don’t ask — 100 degrees out and we lost).
Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau are smart people, not “twerps” as some idiot described them in the NY Post.
They were the subjects of “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” which screened at Sundance, Tribeca, and Hamptons Docs two years ago. I saw it exactly on July 5, 2024 at Guild Hall in East Hampton. Alec Baldwin hosted a Q&A after the screening.
Atop the Empire State Building, they unfurled a banner that read “When the power of love beats the love of power, the world will know peace.”
Then Ivan and Angela became engaged. She showed off a picture of her ring and her manicure. LOL. They had the same bravado they had in the movie.
The young Russian couple met online, sharing a vision of climbing skyscrapers — or “rooftopping.” The movie — directed by eff Zimbalist and co-directed by Maria Bukhonina — is sensational. It follows the pair and their crew all over Eastern Europe, where they scale the tallest buildings they can find. They are methodical and resourceful. I thought the doc was terrific. But Netflix got cold feet and didn’t do much for it, which surprised me.
There were many luminaries at the screening who live nearby including former NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and his wife, Veronica. During the Q&A after the screening, I asked a question of the directors, then jokingly asked Kelly if the couple could get away with this sort of thing in New York.
Kelly — I’m a big fan — laughed and told the audience he didn’t think so. “The New York police would stop them in a minute,” he told the crowd.
He and his wife, Veronica, enjoyed the film but like a lot of people found it maybe too good to be true. Did these people really climb all these buildings without attracting attention?
And yet, there they were today, atop the Empire State Building. I felt very proud that they managed to do it. If you see the film, you’ll know they plan these climbs carefully. Usually they get into the building at night, find a hiding place, and then go on their adventure.
Was today’s stunt for a new doc? Could be, and not necessarily for Netflix. But good for them! Much more interesting couple than Taylor and Travis, that’s for sure. I’m sick of that wedding already.
PS Did Ivan and Angela really get engaged today? I thought they already were engaged, or maybe married. No matter. Brilliant hook.
This could be the director’s second big summer after “Oppenheimer” was such a hit in 2023. Of course, “Barbie” helped, too. “The Odyssey” could have been “Kenodyssey.”
Matt Damon, Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, and dozens more star in this epic telling of Homer’s epic poem.
Coming July 17th. btw Homer has rights to “The Iliad,” and CAA is negotiating now.
As Robert Cray sang so well, The forecast calls for pain.
Tonight and tomorrow, temperatures in New York will be sweltering. Lightning and thunder are expected Friday afternoon.
That’s about when Taylor Swift will say I do to Travis Kelce — and vice versa. Cost of the wedding actually happening at Madison Square Garden: $20 million.
According to reports, the rehearsal dinner for 100 guests will take place in the Theater at Madison Garden. Then the wedding will kick off Friday afternoon for 1,000 guests. Swift and friends will put on a big concert with a specially built stage. Pictures from the scene indicate she’s building a massive garden with a castle inside the Garden.
What’s the over/under on this marriage? For $20 million, she has to hope it lasts at least 20 years. But Kelce will return to football and Swift — even if she starts a family — won’t stop recording and touring. Usually all of that is a bad mix. So let’s cross fingers for them.
Swift and Kelce could have an elegant wedding — like at the Waldorf — or an intimate one. They could have low-keyed the whole thing. But what would be the point? Soon we’ll find out she sold the rights — maybe to Disney, where she does a lot of business, or to People magazine — and there could even be a bootleg soundtrack by Monday.
Me? I’m checking StubHub for scalped tickets.
BTW, tonight Madonna releases her latest album. She may be overshadowed by the wedding. It’s pretty hard to put Madonna in a corner, unless, of course, she’s performing at the concert!
PS NY Post headline for sure — “Wedding Taylor-Made”
Four time Emmy nominee Danny Glover tells NBC’s Lester Holt he has Alzheimer’s Disease.
Glover was diagnosed in 2022, around the time he won a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Motion Picture Academy. He was given a Lifetime Achievement Oscar.
Glover became an overnight sensation on Broadway in 1982, starring in Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold and the Boys,” a role he reprised in 2003. After his Broadway launch, he went on to star in four “Lethal Weapon” movies.
He tells Holt that his favorite movie was Robert Benton’s “Places in the Heart,” starring Sally Field. Some of his other great roles were in movies like “Grand Canyon,” “A Rage in Harlem,” and “Dreamgirls.” Years after “Places in the Heart,” he played Sally Field’s love interest on TV in “Brothers and Sisters.”
Alzheimer’s is cruel and you can see it’s already taken its toll on Glover. At least for now he knows how much his acting and political activism have meant to everyone.
Sad to hear that Victor Willis, head of the Village People, has died at 75.
Donald Trump rushed to his computer to eulogize Willis early this morning, knowing he’d get a headline. Trump usurped Willis’s Village People song, “YMCA,” for his rallies even though it was about gay life in the 1970s.
Willis tried to stop Trump from using “YMCA” during his 2016 campaign, but failed. The singer-songwriter voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. But eventually he was persuaded by Trump’s team to come around and perform at the 2025 Inauguration. Money talks, everyone dances.
The Village People were a gay phenomenon in the late 70s and early 80s. Their songs, including “Macho Man” and “In the Navy,” were novelty hits. “Macho Man” even got parodied on “The Simpsons” as “Nacho Man.” During that time, Willis signed away his rights to his portion of the songs. But as “YMCA” grew as a crowdpleaser — especially at Yankee Stadium and other crowd events — he sued to recover his copyrights. He won the case in 2012.
Initially Willis sent a cease and desist letter to Trump over having a fake Village People band playing at Mar-a-Lago and singing the hits. He tried to stop Trump from using “YMCA.” Eventually, though, he realized there was money to be made from Trump’s usage. Everyone has a price, and Willis was not immune. By January 2025 he was on stage at Trump’s second inauguration.
Before Trump resurrected it, “YMCA” was kind of a joke. But Spotify now says it’s on the precipice of a shocking 500 million streams.
As for physical product, there’s only “The Very Best of the Village People” still available on amazon. It’s current at number 59,800. But let’s see over the weekend if Willis’s death gives it a boost. The irony would be sort of perfect for America 250.
Reports say Willis died after a short battle with cancer. Condolences.
Oscar season is shaping up with a duel between head movies.
Today, Neon Pictures announced they’ve bought “Artificial,” the Luca Guadagnino film about Sam Altman and Chat GPT.
Neon picks up the feature after Amazon/MGM had to table it. “Artificial” is critical of friends of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. It’s not “Melania.”
Andrew Garfield stars as Sam Altman, the reptilian founder of the company chipping away at our lives. Remember, Garfield was one of the stars of “The Social Network,” which was written by Aaron Sorkin.
Now, Sorkin has written and directed “The Social Reckoning,” the sort of sequel to “The Social Network.” It’s a continuation of the saga of Mark Zuckerberg — now played by Jeremy Strong — creator of Facebook, the social media platform that has fulfilled its promise of trying to destroy civilization.
These two films will be compared to each other by everyone, starting with critics. They will likely cross each other out, at some point.
What about Oscars? When “The Social Network” came out, it was admired. But it didn’t have the heart of “The King’s Speech.” It was about young people fighting over money they made from something onerous. These two films will be similarly weighed down in the face of “The Odyssey” and other releases.
And buzz? Plenty for both movies. And lots of curiosity. One thing we know for certain. Garfield and Strong will be much touted for the Oscars.
“Melania,” the documentary for which few saw tickets were sold.
Amazon paid Melania Trump $40 million for the doc, which was panned everywhere. It was a self serving infomercial that couldn’t even be called a film.
In theaters, “Melania” made just $16.5 million worldwide.
Now, according to certified annual federal filings, we learn that Melania earned $10.7 million from the movie.
If this were a real film, bankruptcy would be next.
As it is, Melania probably get three more payments to make that $40 million.
So when our Amazon Prime memberships increase in price, keep this in mind. Someone had to pay for this bribery scheme, and it wasn’t Jeff Bezos, trust me.
Also on Melania’s income form: $6 million from NFTs — worthless coins — and collectibles, like crappy jewelry and nick knacks, and $521,000 for proceeds from her book, which also didn’t sell very well — under 150,000 copies.
By comparison, “Regime Change,” about the horrors of the Trump admin by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, has sold 300,000 copies in its first week.
The movie and the book were all about Melania’s life as First Lady – so she just exploited her public role to make private income.
Prada’s new spokesperson is Marwan Abdelhamid, known professionally as Saint Levant.
Born in Jerusalem during the second Intifada to a French-Algerian mother and a Serbian-Palestinian father, Abdelhamid spent seven years growing up in Gaza.
The rapper wears a Palestinian pendant in his photos. The pendant features the geographical map of Palestine, omitting Israel from the region. He caused a stir this week by wearing the pendant in a new video.
According to many reports, “Saint Levant” — who lives in Los Angeles — enraged Jews when he praised violent antisemitic attacks targeting Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam. He was repping YSL aka Yves Saint Laurent at the time. Saint Levant was performing in the Dutch city. The 2024 attacks had been described as a “pogrom” targeting Jews.
Saint Levant reportedly told his fans: “Quick little shoutout to our Moroccan brothers for what they did the other day,” he told the crowd. “Because it’s not the first time that they come to a land that’s not theirs and start some shit. So thank you for taking care of business.”
Abdelhamid once told Harper’s Bazaar: “Everything that I do is Israeli-focused and based on the Palestinian cause and struggle, doing a lot of contextualizing […] because I came to America, man, and I realized that a lot of people thought that […] it’s a conflict between these two equal[s who] just hate each other for some reason, [that] Palestinians just hate Israelis. And what people don’t understand is that it’s 80 years of occupation and oppression and displacement and ethnic cleansing so I think it’s very important to just push that forward always and I try to do it through the music; I try to do it through my actions, and everything that I do.”
Royatvnews reported: “The artist has consistently described ‘Israel’s existence in Palestinian territories as an occupation, frequently speaking out against decades of oppression and displacement. Amid the ongoing war in Gaza, Abdelhamid has publicly accused ‘Israel’ of committing genocide, a stance that has made him a deeply polarizing figure globally, while cementing his status as a prominent cultural voice for Palestinian solidarity.”
Maybe Prada simply doesn’t care about Jewish customers. But this is yet another continuation of the normalizing of antisemitism by corporations.
