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Say it with me now: Bryan Cranston is bringing “Network” to Broadway this fall.
The famous Sidney Lumet movie written by Paddy Chayefsky starred Peter Finch, William Holden, and Faye Dunaway. But it was never staged. Now Cranston will play Howard Beale, the network anchor who snaps, in this adroit satire.
This is a National Theater production, directed by Ivo vanHove (who’s everywhere, everyone wants him on their shows) and adapted by Lee Hall.
The Lumet movie won four Oscars, by the way, for Finch, Dunaway, supporting actress Beatrice Straight, and for Chayefsky for Best Original Screenplay.
Cranston, once known as Dr. Tim Watley on “Seinfeld,” has a Tony award and a boat load of other statues for his fine work in all media. He will be terrific as Beale, particularly in the infamous rant below.
The big question is who will play Dunaway’s seethingly ambitious network executive Diana Christensen? I’ll bet Faye would like to do it herself! (She could!) But that role will be a juicy one.
(Just thinking about Sidney Lumet made me sad. Go back, see all his movies. He was a genius.)
Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey has issued a series of Tweets explaining why he hasn’t joined Facebook, YouTube and other social media in dumping Alex Jones and his crazy, hurtful InfoWars. His explanation is lacking, I’m afraid. But here it is. Dorsey also directs his readers to the Twitter mission statement. Dorsey’s blue bird is not flying high on this one, I’m afraid.
“We didn’t suspend Alex Jones or Infowars yesterday. We know that’s hard for many but the reason is simple: he hasn’t violated our rules. We’ll enforce if he does. And we’ll continue to promote a healthy conversational environment by ensuring tweets aren’t artificially amplified.
If we succumb and simply react to outside pressure, rather than straightforward principles we enforce (and evolve) impartially regardless of political viewpoints, we become a service that’s constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction. That’s not us.
Accounts like Jones’ can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors, so it’s critical journalists document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions. This is what serves the public conversation best.”
Glenn Close– who should have an Oscar and maybe will get one this time for “The Wife” — is getting another big award first. Glenn will receive the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the Museum of the Moving Image come December 3rd.
Glenn joins a long and austere list of top notch actors who’ve been honored by the MMI including Annette Bening, Warren Beatty, Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, Robert DeNiro, Robin Williams, Goldie Hawn, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, Hugh Jackman, Steve Martin, Julianne Moore, Al Pacino, Sidney Poitier, Julia Roberts, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Jimmy Stewart.Whew!
“The Wife,” directed by Bjorn Runge, opens next week in New York and Los Angeles, and is sporting a fantastic 95 on Rotten Tomatoes. Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, and Max Irons co-star. Based on a novel by Meg Wolitzer, Glenn plays the loyal wife of a writer who win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. Off to Stockholm they are swept, where Slater– a dogged and charming journalist– is determined to unearth secrets. And he does.
Sony Pictures Classics hosted a swell mid summer soiree at the Monkey Bar last week for all these people. Glenn Close was beaming. She has many Oscar noms, no wins. This one could be it if — if Lady Gaga, Saorise Ronan and few others don’t get in the way. I think this is Close’s year. How much more talented could she be? She’s also opening at the Public Theater in September in Jane Anderson’s “Mother of the Maid” (Anderson wrote the “Wife” screenplay). Fingers are crossed for a Broadway transfer during the winter.
As for the MMI Award, you know they get a lot of pals to come make toasts. So expect Michael Douglas from Glenn’s most famous movie, “Fatal Attraction,” plus great co-star like Janet McTeer, maybe Jeff Bridges, and even some Dalmatians!
Catwoman herself, the regal Julie Newmar–who turns 85 next week– holding court, and Gustavo Dudamel conducting Rachmaninoff at the Hollywood Bowl: It doesn’t get better than that. And the woman responsible for bringing Julie there to reign is Donelle Dadigan, long a respected figure in Hollywood.
Tireless Donelle is founder of the Jose Iturbi Foundation, their mission statement is “Popularizing Classical Music…One Note at a Time!” She is also the Founder and CEO of the Hollywood Museum. Recently, Julie hosted the pre-VIP event at the Bowl to benefit the foundation and classic Hollywood was at out in force. Besides luminous Julie, others included “General Hospital” star Carolyn Hennessy, the great George Chakiris, “Mrs. Walton” Michael Learned, Alison Arngrim (from “Little House on the Prairie”), the mighty Paul Sorvino, TV beauty (two Emmy noms) Lee Purcell, and “Mrs. C” — Marion Ross, of “Happy Days” (who was chatting about her book “My Days, Happy and Otherwise.”)
I spoke with the lovely Julie about her still avid fan base and her quest for her elusive star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She told me, “I was a dancer to start with, and I didn’t start acting until I was 24. I got a Tony award,” she said, throwing this little fact in. In fact, she did get a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play, in 1959’s “The Marriage-Go-Round.” Her co-stars– are you ready for this?– were legends Charles Boyer and Claudette Colbert.
Seven years later, in 1966, Newmar would find herself a household name, body and face, purring on the hit “Batman” TV show with Adam West, Burt Ward, and the likes of Cesar Romero and Frank Gorshin. They are now all etched in history.
“Catwoman,” she says, “brought in a sizable public and the wonderful thing is that it’s still reverberates and is still being played in movies, TV series and comic books. It amazes me. It’s a marvelous character. So, I wish I could dance my way on the Walk of Fame. Maybe two strapping fellows would bring me there!”
She then told me about her upcoming book, a photo biography called “The Nine Lives Of Julie Newmar.” I asked her about any tidbits she has that she hasn’t talked about yet. She quipped, “I’m like my good friend George Hamilton, I keep my lips sealed and say nothing. You have to imagine it.”
Did she, as rumor had it, have a tryst with the original Batman, Adam West? She laughed, “No, I did not have an affair with Adam West.He was a sweetheart and wonderful. He was the best Batman of all.Maybe it was the times, but he seemed to just get it. “
Any other fun stuff to share I asked her? “Oh yes.An Astrologer just told me that I’m going to get married next year.So lets just look forward to that.”
Then Julie greeted two French friends in perfect French. She commandeered the room and the Bowl, where fans where thrilled to see her. The Hollywood Walk of Fame should give this icon, so ahead of her time, her deserved star ASAP.
No one said Broadway was easy. I really thought the Go Go’s musical “Head Over Heels” would close on opening night. It has all the earmarks of “Springtime for Hitler.” Critics tried to like it because was gender fluid, but in reality it leaks all over the place.
Turns out the reviewers didn’t help. After the opening, the show dropped 14.71%. Receipts from the prior week fell by over $23,000. The total the show can make at the Hudson Theater is $883,552. The week after it opened “Head Over Heels” grossed just $297,420. The closing notice should be coming soon, if not today.
Just about every show took a massive hit last week as summer ebbs, school starts in a lot of places, tourists return to their planets. “The Lion King” dropped by over $300,000! “Wicked” came close to that. “Hello, Dolly!” dropped by almost $20,000. “My Fair Lady” fell by a whopping $75,000. The Donna Summer show, which I can’t believe is still playing, dropped by $118K!
Broadway will go through a summer downturn now until Labor Day. Bruce Springsteen is yachting with David Geffen off Capri, so his usual $2.4 million weekly take is missing. But the new fall shows are just around the corner. And everyone is counting on “Pretty Woman” to come through!
Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Who is America?” has settled into a weekly average number of viewers: 300,000. This week it was 313K, last week a little under, etc. It’s never more than that. He’s found his audience. They are loyal. But the show is in last place in its time slot on Sundays, beaten by everything else on cable.
It doesn’t seem to matter what the press is from the prior week. This week, SBC failed to get a local politician in Utah to fall for being called a pedophile.David Pyne, national director of the Utah Republican Assembly, turned out to be a smart cookie. He’s probably a bad guy but I liked him for smelling a rat.
The big get was Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who’s not exactly a member of Mensa to begin with. SBC just kept talking and talking until he’d convinced Joe to say he’d give Trump oral sex. Arpaio would have agreed to anything at that point. It was a lot of fun.
I like the show, and I’m watching it. So I’m one of the 300,000– although this week Spectrum couldn’t manage to provide Showtime at 10pm. It was weird, but the main Showtime channel wouldn’t register. Spectrum is being booted from New York State for a good reason.
Showtime’s David Nevins said this week that the network wants more of “Who is America?” and why not? It’s cheap to produce. Nevins said he was on the fence about a show I really love called “I’m Dying Up Here” and said nothing about their best show, “Billions,” which should have been on HBO.
So here’s a real time update on Zayn and his “Too Much” single.
Through Sunday, sales are now 2,200 copies total. The original 13 copies were sold last Thursday. The 19 more were from Friday through Saturday. Another 1,900 registered on Sunday.
The single is still not in the iTunes top 100. Tomorrow will be one week. There’s no sign that anything is happening at all.
The numbers come from BuzzAnglePro, which measures sales, streams, downloads. I’m not inventing the numbers, and I’m not reporting them to be mean. I’m trying to show you what happens when there is no plan in place.
Johnny Depp just got some more bad news. “City of Lies” about the Biggie Smalls murder has been yanked from the schedule by its distributor.
Global Road has suddenly pulled the film, which co-star Forest Whitaker, from its September 7th window. No reason was given.
The film directed by Brad Furman has 20 producer credits. It’s unclear whether the cancellation has anything to with Depp’s problems or something about the film itself.
“City of Lies” is based on a book by Randall Sullivan called “Labyrinth: The True Story of City of Lies, the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. and the Implication of the Los Angeles Police Department.”
Depp and Whitaker play detectives who investigated the murders of Christopher “Biggie” Wallace and Tupac Skakur.
Depp needs a good movie right. His career is a mess other than “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. He hasn’t had a non-Pirate hit in years. His resume is littered with utter flops. To offset the problem, he’s taken a role in the sequel to “Fantastic Beasts” coming this fall. But it’s not the lead, or the second role.
“City of Lies” is either so bad that it can’t be released, or there’s suddenly some legal problem. Stay tuned…
Mackenzie Astin, the acting brother of Sean and son of John Astin and Patty Duke, has posted this lovely remembrance of Charlotte Rae. He was 10 years old when he appeared on 21 episodes of “The Facts of Life.” He remembers her as being “squishy. Good squishy. Cookie dough squishy. It was comfortable in that embrace. Safe.”
Robert Redford says he’s retiring from acting. He’s making good on a comment he offered two years ago that the end was near.
He tells Entertainment Weekly that he may still direct. He won an Oscar in 1981 for directing “Ordinary People.”
His last film, “The Old Man and the Gun,” will be released at the end of September.
Redford has never won an Oscar for acting. He was nominated just once in 1974 for “The Sting.” One problem is that he’s not a campaigner– he’s never put much stock in soliciting awards. But he has plenty of films for which he should have been nominated, from “The Candidate” and “Jeremiah Johnson” to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Way We Were,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “Out of Africa,” “All the President’s Men,” and even more recently, his brilliant work in “All is Lost.” He was also excellent as Dan Rather in the little seen “Truth.”
Redford’s not going away. He still runs the Sundance Film Festival and all its organizations. He’s a vocal environmentalist. And maybe he will direct again, too.
