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Total was $40.7 million, up more than $7 million from last week. Not bad.
“Hamilton” with Leslie Odom Jr continues to lead the way with almost $3.9 million. Everyone wants to be in the room where the award musical happens! This is good news. The more people who see “Hamilton” may actually explain to them how the government has gone wrong.
Many shows are booming. “Just in Time” continues to fill Circle in the Square. Doesn’t Jonathan Groff get tired? Evidently, not. “Just in Time” should be a gold mine not only for him and the producers but all the songwriters who made Bobby Darin’s hits.
All the “Wicked” talk about the new movie has sent the musical up to almost $2.3 million.
What needs help? Not “Art” with its all star cast. But the little plays: “Liberation” and “Little Bear Ridge Road.” Not everything be sung about, you know!
New shows this week: “The Queen of Versailles” opened to mixed reviews Sunday night. Next up is “Chess,” on Sunday.
It wouldn’t be Veterans Day without Bob and Lee Woodruff’s Stand Up for Heroes.
Nor would it be the launch of Caroline Hirsch and Andrew Fox’s NY Comedy Week.
The annual event, this year, at David Geffen Hall aka the NY Philharmonic, had a star studded cast of comics.
Jon Stewart, Jim Gaffigan, Alex Edelman, Mike Birbiglia, and Tom Papa were among the jokesters.
Tony winners Leslie Odom Jr., Lea Michelle, and Idina Menzel sang their hearts out. Odom was in the room where it happened — his day off from appearing on Broadway in “Hamilton.”
The audience went wild. (A little disappointment this year: no Bruce Springsteen telling “dirty” jokes.)
During a “raise your paddle” donation moment, Trump lackey and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick gave $250,000 to the cause. Does it make him a better person? Not really. He’s let Trump run amok in private business. But if it helps wounded veterans, he gets some points.
Jon Stewart on aging: “You know what I don’t look good in anymore? Pictures.”
The Woodruff Foundation was founded by ABC correspondent Bob and wife Lee after he recovered from a roadside bomb attack in Ira in 2006. He suffered traumatic brain injury and a 36 day coma, but came back stronger than ever. Now he and Lee do everything they can for soldiers harmed in any situation. They’re amazing people, and so are the soldiers and their families!
Beloved and kooky, Kirkland reportedly died overnight at age 84 in Palm Springs, California. She was in hospice for dementia after a fall.
Sally was one of a kind. She’d been in Hollywood for decades when she nabbed a part in a 1987 indie movie called “Anna.” She knew she was good, and that there was no studio money, so she conducted her own warrior Oscar campaign and got a much deserved nomination.
“At the Oscars, there were all these movie stars emerging from their limos, and then there was me. I felt like Cinderella. The greatest part was the feeling to be in the same Oscar category of these women that I was a huge fan of — Meryl, Glenn, Holly Hunter and Cher, who I used to rollerskate with in the ’70s,” she told the Huffington Post in 2012.
Google her and find interviews in many venues. She was a longtime girlfriend of Bob Dylan — she admits to “stalking” him. She loved Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Barry Primus and that crowd. They loved her, too, and supported her during the “Anna” campaign.
Sally’s mother was also named Sally Kirkland. She was fashion editor of Vogue and then Life Magazine for years. They lived on the Upper East Side in apartment next to my great uncle Walter, a charming curmudgeon. He told me, “Little Sally left her bicycle in front of our door and I’d trip over it every morning. I was always asking her mother to move it.”
She never stopped working. Sally Kirkland has 270 credits on the imdb. Of those 32 are producer credits. She was incredibly smart and knew how tough it was in Hollywood for a woman. But she had an unflagging optimism and faith in herself. She was a survivor, and will be missed terribly by everyone who knew her.
If you do you can read his novel, called “Ingram,” which is about neither Luther Ingram, Dan Ingram, or Ingram book distributors.
“Ingram” is a serious first novel by someone who’s read Faulkner and Steinbeck. I don’t say that negatively because only I read the first free chapter on amazon. Who knows? “Ingram” may win a book award.
I’m just telling you it exists. The publisher says it’s “picaresque.” Louis says in a promo email this morning: “Ingram is a novel. It’s fiction. It’s about a boy who runs into a lot of trouble. And about who he is and how he gets through it. It’s about the people that he meets and the world the way he sees it. I wrote it. And now it’s yours.”
Louis CK — canceled several years ago after graphic reports of misbehavior — made one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, not released, called “I Love You Daddy.” The good news, “Ingram” doesn’t seem so terrible. That’s my quote.
Attention BenBella books: send me a pdf at showbiz411@gmail.com and I’ll read it.
Aimee Mann started her career 40 years ago a little New Wave with “Voices Carry.” Her band, til Tuesday, had three excellent albums culminating in the delicious “Everything’s Different Now.”
Then Mann pursued a non-major label indie path, producing more than a dozen indie albums of carefully crafted, beautifully produced songs each of which really feels like a box of sumptuous chocolates. They’re hard on the outside, gooey inside, and unforgettable.
You might know her from the soundtrack of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia.” Aimee got an Oscar nomination for a song about resignation and anger called “Save Me.” It’s one of the few perfect soundtracks to an equal achievement of a film.
She’s also had a range of side things, often reviving material from the 70s. I cherish her cover of Badfinger’s “Baby Blue,” for example. But anything she does, with her buttery, melodic voice, is welcome.
This week she covers Paul Williams’ song made a hit by the Carpenters. “Rainy Day and Mondays” is Aimee’s second bite of this apple. Her first was “Yesterday Once More.” She could really just sing the whole catalog and I’d be all for it. Karen Carpenter — one of the great voices of all time — made the song seem wistful. Mann gives it a little bitterness, which is about right these days.
PS On Aimee’s social media you can find her precisely winsome cartoons. Another side gig that’s worked out.
This track is from an HBO show called “The Chair Company.” I have no idea what that is, but sit and listen:
I ended up liking “Bugonia,” but getting there wasn’t easy.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s horror film is full of torture porn and so much unpleasantness, I might have walked out of a theater if I’d been in one last night.
Alas, I was lucky enough to be at home but that meant there was no exit.
Emma or Emily Stone and Lanthimos have already proven they can make a strange, wonderful movie with “Poor Things.” They pulled off weirdness with aplomb. The chemistry was just right.
Then they didn’t with “Kinds of Kindness” last year.
I was thinking after the first 40 minutes of “Bugonia,” maybe stop while you’re ahead.
“Bugonia” is based on the Korean film “Save the Green Planet,” which has a cult following. Jang Joon-hwan was supposed to direct the American version, but became ill and Lanthimos took over. Something was lost in the translation.
Stone is an executive in an isolated corporation that has the stark modern feel of the house in “Paranoia.” Her house is the same. She seems like an uptight corporate type handling many employees, but if you think about it later, all is not as it appears.
Very quickly, two employees kidnap her. They are Jesse Plemons — almost emaciated — and Aidan Delbis, whose real life autism is played for bizarre-ness. They’re odd, greasy and dirty, poor, but — at least in Plemons’ case — extremely articulate. They’re also psychotic and violent. All of those ingredients make a recipe for disaster.
“Bugonia” is not a Coen brothers movie. There’s no fun in the kidnapping. Or rather, it’s more of the woodchipper from “Fargo” than “Raising Arizona.” For about 40 minutes there’s promise of a turn in which the kidnapping will be overcome and something strangely beautiful will occur. But the second act, so to speak, is difficult enough that the surprises of the third may not be worth it to most people.
The kidnappers believe Stone is an alien, and have their own proof. It seems ridiculous until you start putting the pieces together. Maybe they’re not so wrong. They’re crazy but maybe like foxes. Stone’s corporate leader is a skilled negotiator, so she’ll say anything to get out of this predicament. Do we believe her?
If you can make it through the violent desert of that middle section, the climax and denouement are unexpected prizes. But by that time, like me, you may have wondered how you possibly stayed put. Unlike “Poor Things” — in which Stone helped create a world of wide eyed wonder in the middle of madness — “Bugonia” is just weird. Yes, it’s social satire to a point, and then it’s not.
That third part — well, let’s say that’s where the money was spent, so that part is a pay off. For the first two thirds of “Bugonia,” it’s basically a stage play with two or three characters in a standoff. At least visually, the ending is something to behold in what becomes a sci fi horror show. “Bugonia” has all the makings of a cult movie to be, if there were still college cinemas that could bring in crowds.
I was torn. Did I hate it? Yeah, some of it. But the brilliance at the end — it’s worth waiting — was a gift wrapped in shiny paper. I was happy to open it.
Are audiences enjoying this movie? “Bugonia” has an 83% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which seems about right. Critics liked it only a little more, at 87%. It’s a B plus at least for now. In ten years, we may feel differently.
from Monday: I was a Gordon Lightfoot fan, mainly because of “If I Could Read Your Mind” and “Sundown.”
But then came “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
By that time I was 19, and listening pretty much only to R&B and to the burgeoning world of punk and new wave, and great pop.
“The Wreck” went on for hours, a droning story about the actual wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald a year earlier. That was a tragedy. Twenty nine crew members went down with the boat on Lake Superior in November 1975. Terrible stuff.
But did you have to hear it every minute on AM radio? The great Lenny Waronker produced it at Warner Bros, and the single was number 1 for weeks. Weeks! On Cashbox (which I followed), Billboard, and the goddam radio! You couldn’t get away from it. Just droning on and on.
Well, it’s the 50th anniversary of the actual wreck. Next year will be the 50th for the song. And it’s back! Number 2 on iTunes. The record will put you into a fitful sleep, trust me. It was six minutes long! And look, it wasn’t “Isn’t She Lovely” or “Hey Jude.” Or “Inagaddadavida.” It marked the end of the 1970s. A year later, the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello were all in swing. They were a reaction to the Edmund Fitzgerald, a purging.
Pop star Sombr aka Shane Boose — who was the musical guest on “SNL” this weekend — had a famous grandfather.
The obit for R. Andrew (Andy) Boose is in today’s New York Times. He died at 87 on October 30th and was a famous New York lawyer specializing in arts and culture.
Boose was the attorney for esteemed celebrities like the writer JD Salinger, playwright John Guare, and violinist Itzhak Perlman.
According to the obit, Boose “led a team of attorneys in successfully opposing the unauthorized publication of the author’s unpublished letters – that 1987 case, Salinger v. Random House, spurred legislative amendments to the U.S. Copyright Act and remains an important precedent in determining the appropriate scope of “fair use” of an author’s copyrighted work.”
This case was a big deal, I remember it well. Biographer Ian Hamilton had gotten hold of some of Salinger’s letters and published them in a biography without permission. Boose sued on behalf of the famed writer, who was still alive at the time. He won, the book was withdrawn and published without the letters. The case set a precedent in book publishing. I hope the notoriously private Salinger puts out a welcome mat for Mr. Boose in heaven.
Presumably Mr. Boose (his son, Andy Jr, has a big events company that does shows for Elton John’s AIDs charity and amFAR) got to hear Sombr’s hit singles before he passed.
Brace yourselves for a big non event in book publishing.
Curb your enthusiasm for Cheryl Hines’s book, “Unscripted,” when it hits bookstores and online seller tomorrow.
Amazon.com currently has it at around number 12,000.
This is after a month of pushing the book in interviews that defended crazy husband Robert Kennedy Jr. and his boss, Donald Trump.
No one really wants the book, although it’s likely it will move up a bit on the best seller list — maybe to 11,000.
Over the weekend, Hines promised to donate some of the book’s proceeds to the right wing Children’s Health Defense Fund. But she may not have much to give them if the best seller list in any indication.
She said at the CHD’s dinner, according to MSNBC, “CHD has been such supporters of families of parents with children that have been injured with vaccines or any sort of health issues. Thank you for supporting CHD and Bobby for all these years.”
Hines has gone to the dark side, endorsing her husband’s anti vaccine and conspiracy theories. Larry David not only doesn’t talk to her anymore, she’s the only cast member from “Curb” not invited to join him on his HBO sketch comedy show.
Watch for “Unscripted” on 99 cent remainder tables, and on Sixth Avenue sidewalk sales.
Mariska Hargitay broke down in tears twice last night during her speech at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards.
Her beautiful and surprising film about her late mother Jayne Mansfield, called “My Mom Jayne,” won Best First Documentary. The film as a labor of love, and anyone who’s seen it knows its impact.
Mariska, tough as nails on “Law Order SVU,” was verklempt, to say the least.
As usual the CCA Doc Awards, held at the Edison Ballroom, were so good it streamed on YouTube (see at the bottom). It’s an intimate, fun night because the films are literally hand-made, their creators are authentic and genuine. Kudos to Joey Berlin, Christopher Campbell, and co.
The big winner of the night was Netflix’s “The Perfect Neighbor,” which is streaming now and should be an Oscar contender. “Being Led Zeppelin” won Best Music Doc, tying with “Sly Stone.”
The other winners are below.
Host for the night was a very funny Asif Mandvi. Presenters included Christine Baranski, Michael Chernus, Maria Cuomo Cole, Mariska Hargitay, Peter Hermann, Reginald Hudlin, Brian d’Arcy James, Hilarie Burton Morgan, the legendary Sheila Nevins, Soledad O’Brien, Raoul Peck, Dawn Porter, Questlove, Ben Stiller, and Rebecca Wisocky.
Legendary documentarian Ken Burns received the Critics Choice Impact Award, presented by acclaimed actor Christine Baranski. The prestigious award recognizes documentarians whose work has illuminated our shared story, made complex issues accessible to broad audiences, and sparked meaningful dialogue that inspires reflection and action. Ken Burns exemplifies this impact through a career that has brought the American experience vividly to life and deepened the nation’s understanding of itself.
Visionary filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady were the recipients of the CCA’s Pennebaker Award (formerly the Critics Choice Lifetime Achievement Award) presented by Pennebaker’s widow and collaborator, Chris Hegedus. Named in tribute to trailblazing documentarian D A Pennebaker, the award celebrates filmmakers whose careers have made a profound and lasting contribution to the art of documentary storytelling.
It was a big night for legendary late playwright Arthur Miller. His talented director daughter, Rebecca Miller, won two prizes for “Mr. Scorsese,” airing on Apple Plus TV. Then Arthur himself was seen on screen being interviewed about writing “A View from the Bridge.” The Miller family rocks!
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix)
BEST DIRECTOR
Geeta Gandbhir – The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix)
BEST FIRST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
My Mom Jayne: A Film by Mariska Hargitay (HBO Max)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Toby Strong, Doug Anderson (Underwater Photography) – Ocean with David Attenborough (National Geographic)
BEST EDITING
Viridiana Lieberman – The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix)
BEST SCORE
Alexei Aigui – Orwell: 2+2=5 (Neon)
BEST NARRATION
Orwell: 2+2=5 (Neon)
Written by George Orwell, Adapted by Raoul Peck
Performed by Damian Lewis
BEST ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTARY
The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix)
BEST HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY (TIE)
The American Revolution (PBS)
Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time (National Geographic)
BEST BIOGRAPHICAL DOCUMENTARY
Mr. Scorsese (Apple TV)
BEST MUSIC DOCUMENTARY (TIE)
Becoming Led Zeppelin (Sony Pictures Classics)
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) (Hulu, Onyx Collective)
BEST POLITICAL DOCUMENTARY
The Alabama Solution (HBO Max)
BEST SCIENCE/NATURE DOCUMENTARY
Ocean with David Attenborough (National Geographic)
BEST SPORTS DOCUMENTARY
America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (Netflix)
BEST TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY
The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix)
BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY
Saving Superman (Switchboard)
BEST LIMITED DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Mr. Scorsese (Apple TV)
BEST ONGOING DOCUMENTARY SERIES
30 for 30 (ESPN Films)
