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Trump Cannot Block Critics on Twitter Says US Southern District Court in Ruling “The Answer is No”

Roger Friedman
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Trump Cannot Block Critics on Twitter Says US Southern District Court in Ruling “The Answer is No”

US Southern District Court judge Naomi Reice Buchwald has ruled that Donald Trump as President of the United States cannot block critics on Twitter.

Judge Buchwald wrote in her decision:

“This case requires us to consider whether a public official may, consistent with the First Amendment, “block” a person from his Twitter account in response to the political views that person
has expressed, and whether the analysis differs because that public official is the President of the United States. The answer to both questions is no.”
The case was brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University against Trump, Hope Hicks, Sarah Sanders, and Daniel Scavino.
You can read the decision here.

One Week Later, amFAR Provides No Accounting for Cannes Gala, Refuses to Respond to Queries

Roger Friedman
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One Week Later, amFAR Provides No Accounting for Cannes Gala, Refuses to Respond to Queries

A week ago tonight, amFAR held its annual fundraiser in Cannes at the Hotel duCap Eden Roc. Since then, there has not been a word about how much the event made. In past years, amFAR has touted its total that night or the next morning. This year, despite queries to their PR director, there has been nothing. Almost.

The one statement made by the organization, mired in scandal, is that they made “more than last year.” Last year’s given number was $20 million. So far all we know about the 2018 Cinema Against AIDS is that roughly $5 million was reaped from three auction items. One of them was $1.5 million derived from a painting of Bob Dylan by former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan.

That last item is a curiosity. Brosnan paints for a hobby. He has no track record of sales. Even in the overheated international market, one million dollars is a lot of money. You can buy a name painter for less money. So I’d put a red circle around that one.

This year’s Cinema Against AIDS had far less star power than ever before thanks to scandals involving the ouster of Harvey Weinstein and the resignation of Kenneth Cole. Brosnan was the biggest star to attend the event. There was no Sharon Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc. Even Cate Blanchett, head of the jury, skipped the whole thing. Kristen Stewart stopped by for a photo op.

amFAR continues to be weighed down by its own hubris. CEO Kevin Frost makes $600,000 a year. The rest of the staff commands very high salaries. amFAR thrives on parties and celebrities, undercutting its original purpose.

So we wait to see if they will give a figure for this year’s event– or any event. All we can really trust is their annual tax filing. But the one for 2017 has yet to be published. For this year, it will be 18 months until we see what they tell the US government.

“Roseanne” Finale Beaten by “NCIS” But Stays Above 10 Million Total Viewers, Promotes Trump Again

Roger Friedman
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“Roseanne” Finale Beaten by “NCIS” But Stays Above 10 Million Total Viewers, Promotes Trump Again

The finale of “Roseanne” scored 10.3 million viewers, which was fine and more or less stable with the show’s ratings the last few weeks.

But it was also beaten by “NCIS” by a million viewers. “Roseanne” — as I wrote last night– promoted the Trump agenda and wasn’t particularly funny. “NCIS” had 1.4 million more viewers from 8-9pm.

“Roseanne” returns in the fall, for better or worse, with a new executive producer as Whitney Cummings is leaving.

 

Famed Director Ridley Scott Attacked by Asia Argento for Defending Luc Besson on Rape Charge: “Wake the f up, be on the right side of history”

Roger Friedman
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Famed Director Ridley Scott Attacked by Asia Argento for Defending Luc Besson on Rape Charge: “Wake the f up, be on the right side of history”

Actress and director Asia Argento (pron. ah-zee-ah) is attacking Ridley Scott for defending Luc Besson.

Scott, she says, fired Kevin Spacey from “All the Money in the World” when allegations were leveled at him.

Now Scott is defending Luc Besson. Scott said in a Tweet that Besson did not rape his long time mistress Sand van Roy. Argento is furious. She was in a four year relationship with movie mogul Harvey Weinstein that she says began with a rape.

Argento says to Scott: “Where is the coherence? You are old, but you still got time to wake the fuck up”

It’s a crazy time.

Vanity Fair Publishes “Summer Issue,” Skips July for First Time, As Budget Cuts Force More Layoffs

Roger Friedman
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Vanity Fair Publishes “Summer Issue,” Skips July for First Time, As Budget Cuts Force More Layoffs

Vanity Fair is cutting the number of issues it releases, from 12 to 10 a year. They’ve just sent out news of their first first ever summer issue, covering June and July. I’m told the same will happen for December and January.

The cut back to 10 instead of 12 issues a year comes as the glossy also has sustained more layoffs this month, firing six more staffers from the editorial department after 15 were let go in February.

On top of that, for the third month in a row the cover of the magazine is quite odd. The wonderful Emilia Clarke of “Game of Thrones” and “Solo” is featured, but the photo is not particularly attractive and the layout is less so. It’s so utterly different from a Vanity Fair shoot that we’ve come to know and love, you must wonder what in the world is going on. Are they trying to kill themselves?

Additionally, the cover is not by Annie Leibovitz, the famed Vanity Fair photographer for 25 years, but by Craig McDean. There’s nothing wrong with using new photographers, of course. But McDean’s picture of Clarke follows the cover photo two issues ago of Lena Waithe (the intervening cover was a stock pick up of the Royals). It’s spare and realistic, a departure from VF’s three decades.

Ironically, both the Waite and Clarke photos are reminiscent of the pre-Tina Brown Vanity Fair, which had black and white covers that were stark. That iteration of VF nearly went out of business.

Vanity Fair has also introduced a pay wall, so it’s impossible to read the articles on line now unless you pony up. It’s only 10 bucks for the first year. I’ve just paid it. Who knows if there will be a second year!

It’s fair to say we are in a new world of austerity for glossy magazines– smaller staffs, fewer issues a year, slimmer books. It’s the reason Graydon Carter left, and it’s going to be why Anna Wintour exits soon from Vogue.

Decades of excess combined with the internet killing off new generations of readers of the physical product have done them in. All the town cars waiting around on Madison and 43rd are now Ubers circling a fake World Trade Center. And in one week, Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe are dead.

 

Great, Great Novelist and Writer Philip Roth is Dead at Age 85, End of An Era in Modern Literature

Roger Friedman
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Great, Great Novelist and Writer Philip Roth is Dead at Age 85, End of An Era in Modern Literature

Stunning: Philip Roth is dead at age 85. Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Norman Mailer. It’s sort of incredible, but the titans of literature who I grew up worshiping, admiring, are all dead. William Styron, Richard Yates, John Cheever. All gone.

Roth was the winner of many prizes, including the Pulitzer and National Book Awards. His books were hilarious and provocative, from “Goodbye, Columbus” and “Portnoy’s Complaint” to “The Ghost Writer,” “The Counterlife,” and dozens more. Philip Roth was famous for revealing Jewish life for a generation of post-War kids. He was controversial and combative, and alarming.

It’s almost impossible to think that Philip Roth is dead, actually. (I see this right now as Twitter fills up with tributes.) He’s occupied so much of my mind for 40 or 50 years. Terrible. God bless. So weird– just yesterday someone on my plane home asked me who my favorite living writer was and I didn’t hesitate to say his name.

Here’s the New York Times obit.

Movies were made from Philip Roth’s books and stories. They’re all worth checking out, although the best is from the story “Goodbye, Columbus.” “Portnoy’s Complaint” was a feature film, so was “The Human Stain.” More recently, Barry Levinson made a very good movie out of “The Humbling.”

Part of the great sorrow of learning of this death is that you knew Roth was always aiming for perfection. This is what he did. It was a higher calling.

From “The Ghost Writer”:

“I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning. And if I knock off from this routine for as long as a day, I’m frantic with boredom and a sense of waste.”

“Roseanne” MAGA Lesson: The Government Will Bail You Out, So Just Wait if You’re in Trouble

Roger Friedman
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“Roseanne” MAGA Lesson: The Government Will Bail You Out, So Just Wait if You’re in Trouble

Roseanne needs knee surgery but can’t afford it. Right away we wonder, she’s over 65, has Medicare, maybe Medicaid– aren’t the Conners on Obamacare?

But hey–there’s a point to be made here somewhere.

Dan’s construction business is failing, so he’s going to hire “illegals” over his pals who are unionized. He doesn’t seem all that conflicted, frankly. After all, one of his workers is also the big cheese at Grey Sloan Hospital on another show.

But I digress.

Laurie Metcalf, with an Oscar nomination, a Tony win and a new Tony nomination, has nothing to do whatsoever. So she vamps. Her character, Roseanne’s sister, Jackie, is just a prop.

This is “Roseanne.”

And what we learned tonight is that flooding in fictional Lanford causes “The President” to declare their state a national disaster. FEMA will rescue the Conners– their wrecked basement full of water will get them a government check. Dan will do the fixing himself and pay for Roseanne’s operation. “The President” has saved them with federal funds. Of course, the Conners are oblivious to the funds coming from taxes. But that’s another story.

And Roseanne? She only wants to wake up to see Dan, not God (because then she’d be dead) after her surgery. Marriage! They are Ozzie and Harriet. Just don’t think about the real Roseanne’s three trips down the aisle in real life. (She’s one-to-one with her buddy Trump on that score.)

And that’s how the first reboot season of “Roseanne” ends, like “Archie Bunker’s Place”– the godawful spin off of “All in the Family.” John Goodman’s Dan was better off dead, frankly.

I had never watched “The Middle,” which follows “Roseanne” on ABC and tonight finished a nine season run. Ultra-conservative actress Patricia Heaton, who starred in “Everyone Loves Raymond” a long time ago, was the star. I watched for five minutes tonight. Heaton is unrecognizable at this point from the doctor she played on “thirtysomething” in the 1980s. Time and plastic surgery are cruel. Then I remembered I was missing the Yankee game.

 

 

Royal Wedding Song “Stand by Me” Was a Surprise to Famed Composer Mike Stoller: “I didn’t think it would be the ONLY song”

Roger Friedman
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Royal Wedding Song “Stand by Me” Was a Surprise to Famed Composer Mike Stoller: “I didn’t think it would be the ONLY song”

A couple of days before the royal wedding, famed pop music composer Mike Stoller received a call from his office.

He told me, “We heard they might be using ‘Stand by Me’ among other songs in the ceremony.” That was it.

Cut to last Saturday morning. Stoller and his singer-songwriter wife Corky Hale were in Ogunquit, Maine for a pre-Broadway performance of the Lieber and Stoller hit musical “Smokey Joe’s Cafe.” Suddenly the phone started ringing, as they say, off the hook.

“Stand By Me,” which the late Jerry Lieber and Stoller wrote and produced, adapting it from Ben E. King of the Drifters 58 years ago, was featured in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding as performed by the Royal Kingdom Choir. It was the only pop hit heard during the ceremony, which was a massive ratings getter internationally.

Mike told me today: “We didn’t know it would be the ONLY pop song in the ceremony.” He paused. “I’m just thrilled.”

The original version of “Stand by Me” remains a classic pop and R&B hit. There have many dozens of cover hits, too, including a famous one by John Lennon.

Stoller said in an interview published several years ago: “Ben E. had the beginings of a song—both words and music. He worked on the lyrics together with Jerry, and I added elements to the music, particularly the bass line. To some degree, it’s based on a gospel song called Lord Stand By Me. I have a feeling that Jerry and Ben E. were inspired by it. Ben, of course, had a strong background in church music. He’s a 50% writer on the song, and Jerry and I are 25% each.”

The song makes for the big finale of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” a musical comprising the Lieber-Stoller songbook, which returns to Broadway in July. The original production played 2,036 performances from 1995-2000.

“American Idol” Finale Loses First Hour to “The Voice” But Wins Second Hour to No Competition

Roger Friedman
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“American Idol” Finale Loses First Hour to “The Voice” But Wins Second Hour to No Competition

It’s a sketchy win for “American Idol”‘s first finale on ABC.

“Idol” lost its first of two hours to “The Voice” by a nose. The ABC show rebounded from 10-11pm, when NBC basically conceded the time by airing “Running Wild with Bear Gryllis.”

For “Idol,” it’s a victory of some sort, but not what the show used to be. And the winner, Maddie Poppe, is quite awful. If singing Melanie’s “Brand New Key” like karoake is measure of success, then we’re all in trouble.

The three “Idol”  finalists, in fact, were bland and unimaginative. I wonder what happened to some of the more interesting candidates we saw in the auditions. I’m sure one of them will go on to big things, just as Jennifer Hudson (who lost her season) did.

There’s a lot of good music out there right now, and so many aspiring performers who sing rings around the winners of these god awful competitions. I’ve started to think these winners are no better than the people who win gold medals for stuffing the most hot dogs down their gullets at state fairs.

I would have voted for this guy:

Royals (Like Others Their Age) Choose Music from the 60s for Wedding Reception Instead of Own Generation’s Soundtrack

Roger Friedman
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Royals (Like Others Their Age) Choose Music from the 60s for Wedding Reception Instead of Own Generation’s Soundtrack

What’s happened to the culture of ‘young people’ aka thirtysomethings?

There’s an old saw that your favorite music is cemented in high school, from ages 13 to 18. Maybe we could say that’s extended through the end of college, usually around 22.

If that’s the case, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s musical taste should come from around fifteen to twenty years ago, between 1998 and 2003.

But according to reports there was no “Tubthumping” or Backstreet Boys, NSync, or Hanson.

According to the DailyMail, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s first song was Wilson Pickett’s “Land of a 1000 Dances” circa 1966. They hired a 60s American soul covers band to play mid 60s classics from Sam & Dave, Aretha Franklin, Motown’s Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, and so on.

Coincidentally, I went to a lovely wedding the week before– and the main participants were in their late 30s and early 40s. All the music came from the 60s and 70s– it was the same kind of stuff, basically from my era, not from the releases that would have lodged itself in the brains of kids who grew up in the late 80s and 90s.

Apparently, just about nothing from that time that any people want to hear at their wedding. Every generation is living on music from the 60s and 70s– and 50s. The Baby Boom culture– which was largely re-started in “The Big Chill” from 1983– continues to dominate lives of people for whom this would have totally been, to us from the 70s, Snooky Lanson or Glenn Miller.

I’m trying to imagine going to a wedding in the actual 60s and 70s and hearing music from the 1930s and 1940s– haha–this would never have happened. We would have been mortified.

Meanwhile, radio stations– satellite and terrestrial– don’t want to pay for this music. The fight for unpaid royalties on pre-1972 music continues, as well as a performance royalty for the stars who performed those songs.

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