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Soon we’ll have the tally back from the voting members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
While we wait, here’s an update on the fan vote, which is public and still open on the RRHOF website.
Janet Jackson is lagging way behind the top 5. They are, in order: Def Leppard, Stevie Nicks, Todd Rundgren, The Zombies, and the Cure.
Janet is in 6th place. The rest of the top 10 is Devo, Roxy Music, Rage Against the Machine, and Radiohead. The MC5 is dead last– well, the Hall waited too long, and should just put them in. Radiohead– droning on and on– isn’t rock in any form. Janet– a star since she’s a kid– deserves to make this round. Def Leppard’s charms escape me.
It’s time for the Rock Hall to put Billy Preston in as a sideman, if nothing else. He was the actual 5th Beatle and had his own hits. Enough is enough. They should also make peace with Chubby Checker.
Stevie, Todd, and the Zombies are all perfectly due, their time is now. Next year’s list of nominees had better include Carly Simon, among others.
The Broadway box office brings good news, bad news, and just plain news.
“The Cher Show” is a smash hit out of the box. In its first full week of previews, Cher brought in over $1 million. It played to 95% capacity audiences every night. Cher is golden, and ticket sales should just keep increasing. I hope Ms. Bono Allman has a nice piece of the action. “The Cher Show” is going to be like printing money.
Meanwhile, the Go-Go’s show “Head Over Heels” is still playing. Last week they improved their numbers ever so slightly to $233,000. (Wasn’t that what Bette Midler got in weekly perks?) Anyway, at 45% capacity “Head Over Heels” is playing to a room less than half full every night. What is the purpose of this exercise in futility?
Scott Rudin’s not having a good time with “The Waverly Gallery.” The show is playing at 86% and is now being featured at all the discount brokers. Hey folks– go see this play NOW. You don’t want to miss Elaine May. She’s going to be a Tony nominee next spring, I hope, along with Janet McTeer in the just-ended “Berhardt/Hamlet.”
And what about “King Kong”? Terrible reviews didn’t dissuade ticket buyers. Receipts doubled after the show opened. Forget the songs– go see Kong. He’s a giant entertainment. And Christiani Pitts is a hot newcomer!
Well, uh, no one watched the People’s Choice Awards on the E! Channel Sunday night.
Just 582,000 People tuned in to see that nonsense on E! itself. Across four channels, “People’s Choice” scored 1.1 million. (That included Bravo, Syfy, USA Network.) The red carpet show had just 576,000.
The last People’s Choice, on CBS in January 2017, had 6.66 million and was considered a failure.
The 582K number was lower than “Keeping Up with Kardashians” got last week in that slot– 1.1 million, or ever the 800K the K’s have averaged this season.
The only awards show that does worse is the Independent Spirit Awards, with 95,000 viewers.
People’s Choice has long been a joke among awards shows. The winners are pre-selected by publicists and agencies. I would almost go so far as to say they’re paid for under the guise of licensing or “promotional consideration.” How else in the world would “Fifty Degrees of Grey Pt. 3” win Best Dramatic Movie?
Mostly, celeb show up for the publicity. But this may be the end. The show is so devalued that it can only hurt real awards show– real as they are. E! should be persuaded to stop it now.
Someone has talked sense into Kanye West. He’s postponing his twice schedule “Yandhi” album. First it was going to drop in September, then on November 23rd. Wisely, Kanye has decided it isn’t ready yet. No kidding. His “Ye” album sold just 60,000 copies on download, with another 200,000 from streaming. That’s peanuts, and it was only back in June. His sneakers aren’t selling either. Kanye is finally taking a real look at his businesses. I’ll bet Kris Jenner has stepped in.
It felt so good being on the stage last night with my brother Cudi. After performing again, I realize the new album I’ve been working on isn’t ready yet. I’ll announce the release date once it’s done. Thank you for understanding.
A few months ago, Aretha Franklin was alive and blocking the release of “Amazing Grace,” a 1972 concert film companion to her best-selling album of the same name. Sydney Pollack shot it, and then put it away. “Amazing Grace” has been sitting in a vault for 46 years for a variety of reasons.
The reasons were not about money. Aretha had been offered a lot of money by Allan Elliot, who bought the film from Pollack in 2008. She just didn’t want it out there. She had her reasons. I have texts from her about it when she stopped Elliot from showing “Amazing Grace” at Telluride and Toronto in 2015.
Elliot, of course, went to Aretha’s funeral and presented his case to her family. Niece/executor Sabrina Owens let him screen it for 40 people, all of whom loved it. Look, Aretha is gone. She didn’t leave a will. She knew this would happen.
So “Amazing Grace” finally screened Monday night at the SVA Theater. Al Sharpton showed up. Chris Rock came with his girlfriend. (“He won’t do the red carpet,” she cracked, “he’s not wearing his make up.”) Owens came with her husband, and with first cousin Vaughn Franklin and his wife. Otherwise, except for me, Aretha’s publicists, and Sharpton, no one in the theater ever knew Aretha. If you did, no meant no.
Still, her performances in this concert film are just glowing. She opens her mouth and angels fly around. Pollack made a record of her extraordinary gifts. They deserve to be seen. So, too, does Reverend James Cleveland, her childhood friend, who appears with her along with the Southern California Community Choir. Can you imagine– those people have had to wait 40 years to see themselves on screen!
In the audience was Aretha’s drummer, famed Bernard Purdie, who played on so many classic Atlantic Records sessions. At that show, Aretha was 30, Bernard was 33. It was a lifetime ago. That same year, Aretha had major hits with “Don’t Play that Song for Me” and “Until You Come Back to Me” on the pop charts. That’s how versatile she was. No one noticed that “Climhing Higher Mountains” is basically “Don’t Play That Song” with different lyrics.
“Amazing Grace” is a must have CD for anyone who doesn’t have it. Soon the DVD will be, too, Elliot doesn’t have a distributor yet and thinks he’s going to force this movie into the Oscar race on November 13th. He should wait for next year. It’s waaaay too late for that. I hope he takes that unsolicited advice seriously. “Amazing Grace” has waited 46 years, it can wait one more.
The right distributor will have an art house hit with “Amazing Grace.” And even though Aretha herself spoke to a judge to get her restraining order in 2015, it’s time to let her fans have this experience. She was the greatest singer of our lifetime, and her legacy will never end.
Stan Lee is dead. The man who made Marvel comics and the films that followed a part of the international culture was 95.
Stan died after a year from hell following the death of his wife Joan. Friends, associates and family– all greedy– conspired to drive him crazy and ultimately caused his death.
Last March during Oscar week I got an earful about how badly Stan was being treated by his daughter and others who just wanted his money. With Joan gone, Stan was confused and lonely. Everyone preyed on him.
What happened next were lawsuits, accusations, restraining orders that included sales of his blood as souvenirs, Stan losing good friends, and so on.
Now all of those people have had their way. Stan is dead. You can say 95 is “a good life” but what was done to him once his wife died is merciless. Now he’s at peace.
Spider Man, X Men, the Fantastic Four, Wolverine, Avengers, Iron Man, et al– we owe all of it to Stan. In each movie he made an infamous appearance– his “Hitchcock” moment as it were– and audiences always applauded when they caught him sneaking by. I’d guess that he’s in the last “Avengers” movie coming soon. And that better be the end of it. Stan Lee was exploited enough in life.
Alec Baldwin isn’t the only A-lister who won’t be at tonight’s Friars Club Roast of Billy Crystal.
Jimmy Fallon is also out of the mix. Fallon was in LA last night to win a People’s Choice Award. He flew back immediately and tapes the “Tonight” show this afternoon. After that, he goes home to his wife and kids.
Fallon and Baldwin will each miss the honoring of Crystal. They’ll all miss meeting Ronnie “Shoes” aka Ronnie “Copa” Nistico, who’s been with the Friars for less than a year.
Nistico, as I wrote on Friday, has quite a colorful history. He has two convictions for weapons charges, and for assault that was eventually settled. He’s part of the “new” Friars membership which has fewer showbiz people and many more who no one’s ever heard of– except maybe the police.
The Friars Club is still part of an open investigation from the US Attorney’s Office. They also settled a sexual harassment lawsuit last year for seven figures with a former receptionist thanks to named defendant Bruce Charet. Guests tonight will be looking to see if Charet shows up at the Ziegfeld Ballroom, ushering around the likes of Robert DeNiro, Brett Ratner, or Tony Bennett.
The “Roma” Oscar campaign came to New York last night with a screening and reception that included Michael Moore, Julian Schnabel, Gay Talese, Nick Pileggi and many others, at the Whitby Hotel. Director Alfonso Cuaron–Â already winner of an Oscar for directing “Gravity” (and issuing in an era of Mexican directing winners)–brought his star Yalitza Aparicio and Gabriela Rodriguez.
“Roma” is a masterpiece in a season of foreign language films that are all exceptional (Capernaum, Cold War, Never Look Away). On critics’ minds, will its nominations be for Best Foreign Language Film or a straight Best Picture? But that’s not what’s on this director’s mind. Cuaron has turned his talents to a black & white, acutely detailed, Spanish and indigenous language realization of a key figure in his childhood, a maid he renamed Clio who came to live with his family in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. A mother figure to him, from a disadvantaged class, he asks himself, what does she represent in the world of now?
“Roma,” says Cuaron, honors a sense of memory to form a narrative that builds upon narrative. He wrote his script hoping a narrative would build. Thinking more practically, the producer Gabriela Rodriguez told a post-screening crowd that included they had to borrow furniture from family members to honor Alfonso’s memory, to get the apartment just right, and recreate Mexico City in 1970, which they could do from photos; many iconic places had been damaged by a 1985 earthquake. And the cars! In one hilarious recurring image the family Galaxy fits into its spot like a hand in a tight glove. No one can steer it straight into the narrow parking space, laden with dog shit.
Clio was cast after the film team had met 3,000 women from the far reaches of Mexico. From a town 4 hours away from the nearest city, Yalitza Aparicio had never heard of Alfonso Cuaron and at first refused to audition fearing this was a scam for human trafficking. When finally she was persuaded, she never saw a script but was told her lines each day before shooting. In a scene when she tells her lover that she is pregnant, she had no idea what he would answer back. And the crew was clueless too. Only Cuaron who did his own camera work, knew what would happen. After this role, Yalitza Aparicio has traveled far.
Cuaron has, too. “Roma” shimmers in a way most American movies this year just aspire to. And it has lots of in jokes, too– look for a nod to “Gravity” that almost no one is mentioning. Cuaron has two feet on Earth but always an eye to the skies!
Exclusive Hey! Dallas Cowboys all-star Roger Staubach never met a Republican he didn’t like. The result is that he’s one of few breathing recipients of Donald Trump’s Presidential Medal of Freedom. Staubach has been shoveling money at Republicans for years and years, as you’ll see below (and this just a small sample). He joins Miriam Adelson getting the Medal basically for giving money to the Republicans and the GOP. All past presidents gave the Medal to great contributors to culture or science, that kind of thing. But in the Trump Administration, you’re rewarded for writing checks. Or being really dead (Elvis Presley, Babe Ruth, Antonin Scalia). Next year: Betsy Ross, PT Barnum, and Francis Scott Key– plus Steve Wynn, Ted Nugent, and Frederick Douglass– I hear he’s doing great things.
It’s not like they aren’t good movies. (Well, one really wasn’t in a big way.) But Amazon Studios has released five movies in 2018, and they have all been financial disasters.
The latest is “Beautiful Boy,” starring Timothee Chalamet as a drug addicted college student, Steve Carell as the father who dives in to save him. “Beautiful Boy” is based on two memoirs, by fahther and son David and Nick Sheff.
When I first saw the trailer, I put it up on this site and declared that I was sure it would be a big hit on the level of “Ordinary People.” It sure seemed like a tearjerker that would hit home with families going through similar traumas.
But “Beautiful Boy” seems to be a bust. In almost five weeks it’s earned just $5.2 million. This weekend it made $1.4 million playing in 776 theaters. By comparison, “Can You Really Forgive Me”– playing in 391 theaters– earned $70,000 more. The latter film is on the way up. The former is not taking off.
Even awards and nominations may not help “Beautiful Boy.” In four weeks, when the Golden Globes and critics groups in other cities announce their winners, “Beautiful Boy” won’t be in too many theaters if any. It will have run its course and moved over to Amazon Prime, where it may be confused with another movie with the same title from 2011 which was about a teenager who shot up his school and how his parents grappled with the outcome.
All together, Amazon Studios’ five films released since January 1st have made a total of $15 million. Two of them starred Joaquin Phoenix (“Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” and “You Were Never Really Here”). One of them was from the maker of the TV hit “This is Us” (“Life Itself”). One of them was from the director of last year’s critical hit “Call me By Your Name” (Luca Guadagnino’s remake of “Suspiria”). And then there’s “Beautiful Boy.”
Amazon has played its Oscar cards. The only one they have left is a Polish film called “Cold War” directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. It will undoubtedly be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, but it faces steep competition from films like “Roma,” “Capernaum,” and “Never Look Away.” It’s also in black and white and an economic 90 minutes. Right now, “Roma” — from Amazon’s rival Netflix– has the PR lead, but that could change.
Amazon, which had a major success two seasons ago with “Manchester by the Sea,” is struggling. Last year they struck out completely with three films by auteurs– Woody Allen, Todd Haynes, and Richard Linklater. They swung at the fences but it didn’t work out.
Soon we’ll have the tally back from the voting members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
