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Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land” sang up a storm over the weekend: $855,000 in just five theaters. And that number may go up after today’s receipts are counted properly. “La La Land” should sweep the Critics Choice Awards tonight on A&E, then rack up a bunch of nominations in the morning with the Golden Globes. The Oscars are beckoning. Only Martin Scorsese’s “Silence” will prove to be competition.
I watched “La La Land” last night again for the first time since it debuted in Toronto. It is really a work of genius. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are perfection– Gosling isn’t getting enough kudos for his Gene Kelly-like performance and his musicianship. He’s playing a lot of that piano! He and Stone really make for a dreamy old fashioned Hollywood couple.
Much has been written about Justin Hurwitz’s original score, which reminds of Gershwin, Sondheim, and Cole Porter. He’s got two songs in there that are knockouts– “Audition” and “City of Stars.” But John Legend has a hit single on this soundtrack called “Start a Fire.” I hope it gets released. I wonder why it’s not on Legend’s new album? That’s a marketing error, I think.
“La La Land” is arresting and exciting from the minute it begins on the LA freeway. But the real clincher is that “five years later…” retelling of the movie from another point of view. This is Chazelle’s grand gesture. Woody Allen says no one ever talks about him as an influence, but that sequence has to be generated by memories of “Annie Hall” as Alvy remembers their romance. It worked then and it works now.
I didn’t even get into the cinematography– the colors bursting off the screen. Or the editing of the flying sequence (again, a little Woody nod to “Everyone Says I Love You”).
Now– all I want to know is when “La La Land” is coming to Broadway. Because you know, it is, it will be, and it will be a massive hit if the right people are involved and it’s not just another movie adaptation. I don’t know why, but I feel like Stephen Daldry (“Billy Elliott”) and Baz Luhrmann must be fighting over it already!
Bob Dylan sent a beautifully worded acceptance speech to the Nobel Prize panel and it was read Saturday night in Stockholm. Patti Smith performed for him, singing “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” spaced out and flubbed a line. She said, “I’m sorry, I’m so nervous.”
Dylan wrote: “Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?” But now they will be considered literature forever. So he didn’t show up. Big deal. Believe me, the people at that ceremony got a great night. Sting also entertained at the evening gala, as well as the singer Halsey.
Good evening, everyone. I extend my warmest greetings to the members of the Swedish Academy and to all of the other distinguished guests in attendance tonight.
I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize. Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I’ve been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of literature whose works are taught in the schoolroom, housed in libraries around the world and spoken of in reverent tones have always made a deep impression. That I now join the names on such a list is truly beyond words.
I don’t know if these men and women ever thought of the Nobel honor for themselves, but I suppose that anyone writing a book, or a poem, or a play anywhere in the world might harbor that secret dream deep down inside. It’s probably buried so deep that they don’t even know it’s there.
If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, during the year I was born and for a few years after, there wasn’t anyone in the world who was considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize. So, I recognize that I am in very rare company, to say the least.
I was out on the road when I received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to properly process it. I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn’t have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I’m sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: “Who’re the right actors for these roles?” “How should this be staged?” “Do I really want to set this in Denmark?” His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. “Is the financing in place?” “Are there enough good seats for my patrons?” “Where am I going to get a human skull?” I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare’s mind was the question “Is this literature?”
When I started writing songs as a teenager, and even as I started to achieve some renown for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs only went so far. I thought they could be heard in coffee houses or bars, maybe later in places like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine getting to make a record and then hearing my songs on the radio. That was really the big prize in my mind. Making records and hearing your songs on the radio meant that you were reaching a big audience and that you might get to keep doing what you had set out to do.
Well, I’ve been doing what I set out to do for a long time, now. I’ve made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it’s my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do. They seemed to have found a place in the lives of many people throughout many different cultures and I’m grateful for that.
But there’s one thing I must say. As a performer I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me.
But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life’s mundane matters. “Who are the best musicians for these songs?” “Am I recording in the right studio?” “Is this song in the right key?” Some things never change, even in 400 years.
Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?”
So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.
It’s not possible to have lived with a TV set for the last 35 years and not seen Joe Mascolo’s face. He was Stefano DiMera, a comic book villain on “Days of Our Lives” starting in 1982. The inside joke about Stefano was that you couldn’t kill him. His character was murdered dozens of times, and rose like a “Phoenix”– his nickname–days or weeks later.
Alas, Mascolo actually died yesterday at age 87. I met him once at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills after some event and he couldn’t have been nicer. Gone was Stefano’s intercontinental accent. (He was from West Hartford, Connecticut, and not Italy or anyplace exotic.) He was absolutely charming, and loving his late in life fame. God bless him.
Mascolo’s acting credits string back to around 1960 but he didn’t hit his stride until 1981, when he was in a short lived Mafia type TV series. His bio also says he played clarinet with the Metropolitan Opera for a couple of years, and I’ll bet he was a closet opera singer a la Paul Sorvino. In 1982, he became Stefano, a ridiculous character that Mascolo made real — so real he drove the story on a show that used to be about a white bread middle class family from the mid west. How bizarre.
Indeed, when I was in high school, “Days of our Lives” was pure vanilla — bland white people cheating and drinking. Mascolo’s entrance brought ethnicity– something only seen on “Ryan’s Hope.” (Soaps in general do not acknowledge that Italians, Jews, Greeks, etc exist.) Mascolo was followed by John Aniston as the Greek tycoon Victor Kiriakis. (He’s still there after thirty years as well.) They were a shock, I’m sure, to middle America,
So here’s to Joe Mascolo. He was one of a kind, and certainly made daytime TV more interesting that it deserved.
The annual Z100 Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden is the food court of music. The biggest radio station in the country, owned by IHeartMusic (formerly Clear Channel) brings the biggest pop stars in for a four juke box that is unlike anything else in music. God bless Z100’s intrepid leader, Elvis Duran, looking suave and slimmed down, host of “The Z Morning Zoo.” He must wear ear plugs all the time.
And so it was last night as the teen scream level was off the charts, but the acts were on ’em: everyone from a lip synching Justin Bieber (who also looked, sorry, like he was unsure exactly of what was happening) to future icon Ariana Grande, from the hit n run Chainsmokers (they look and sound more like the Gum Chewers) to the effervescent Joe Jonas and DNCE (I have a sweet spot for “Cake by the Ocean”).
The good news first: young Charlie Puth, who I think tours in his sleep, plays the piano with flourishes and has actual songs. He’s the respite for the adults in the audience. He’s sort of the straight Barry Manilow for this generation. He’s very clean cut so I think he’s trying to look messy on stage. Puth already has a medley of hits to look back on after about three years in the business. Kudos to him. But Charlie, go home. Take a nap.
Ariana Grande’s voice gets better and better as her songs get worse and worse. She just should sing Charlie Puth’s songs. Otherwise, she’s shrieking and conducting an exercise class. I did like her giant ear muffs covering her in-ear sound systems.
The Jingle Ball takes four hours. Yes, four hours. The first three are pretty much a warm up act of one hit wonders and miscellaneous acts. Lost in this group was Ellie Goulding, who belongs in the star pack of the final hour. Like Puth, she’s actual artist with songs. And a voice. Ellie, talk to your manager.
That warm up pack– they attempted to perform “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and it was a train wreck. Ryan Seacrest’s East Coat avatar announced that “for the first ever” he’d gotten all the night’s stars to sing together and record this thing. Well, everyone but Bieber and Grande. Now, we all know this holiday ditty from the Crystals and from Bruce Springsteen versions. This one should be erased.
And so the evening builds toward Bieber, the star attraction. Formerly the shower of much skin on stage, Bieber is now covered from head to toe– swathed in white pants and t shirt, topped by a bright yellow hoodie, wearing black leggings. What is going on now? On top of that, he lip synchs like crazy. His songs are playing and he’s not making an effort to sing along. Sometimes he jumps in on a live mic, so you know he can sing. But he’s mostly doing karoake. The scream teens don’t notice, or don’t care. One girl said to me, “Oh yeah, that’s what he does.”
Bieber is no longer dancing. He has dancers, so why bother? He kind of lopes along while they dance. Last night he seemed heavy footed and not quite awake. He was watching the dancers to see where he might jump in. Good lord.
And still he’s a money machine. And the songs are more mechanized, and slicker than ever. “Sorry” seems to be the hardest word.
And yet the Jingle Ball is a celebration. Be there or be square. Even I, at this advanced age, dip into Z100 once a day just to see what’s going on. I suppose it’s no different from my halcyon WABC in its way, and every once in a while you find a gem (“Cake by the Ocean”) that makes it all right.]
PS Not a single black act– no R&B. Last year The Weeknd was on the show. But this was a white night. Drake, Rihanna, J Cole, Rae Sremmund– they’re all over the pop charts and Z100. No one was available?
This may not seem like a big number, but these days it’s enough to crow about: for their first studio album in 11 years, the Rolling Stones have scored a pretty whopping hit.
“Blue and Lonesome” debuts this week with 120,000 copies sold– and I do mean copies as in physical CDs and digital downloads. The album had insignificant streaming.
For a 50 plus year old band, and an album of blues covers, this is kind of extraordinary. “Blue and Lonesome” enters the charts at number 4.
Many “legacy” acts have released new albums this year only to find indifference, or an unmotivated fan base. That includes Van Morrison, Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, Steven Tyler, and Chrissie Hynde with the Pretenders. There are many, many more examples.
But the Stones came up with a good concept and it translated easily in promotion. Their CBS Sunday Morning interview was a total winner, too.
So Viva the Rolling Stones. They returned to their roots and people got it. There’s life in them ole bones yet!
The AFI named its top 10 films and and TV shows of the year. In film they snubbed “Lion,” “Jackie,” and “Loving,” and included “Zootopia” and the questionable choice of “Hacksaw Ridge.” I think they made a mistake on “Lion,” but hey– they sure didn’t ask my opinion.
On the TV side, only one network show– “This is Us”– made the cut. And two OJ Simpson projects were named– “The People vs. OJ Simpson” made the top 10, and a special award went to “OJ: Made in America.” Simpson is probably sitting in jail thinking he’s a star. No, OJ, you are reviled. These shows try to explain how you brutally killed two people. Just FYI.
AFI Movies of the Year
Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
La La Land
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight
Silence
Sully
Zootopia
AFI TV Programs of the Year
The Americans
Atlanta
Better Call Saul
The Crown
Game of Thrones
The Night Of
The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
Stranger Things
This Is Us
Veep
Martin Scorsese has ambushed the Oscar race with Silence, a Masterwork movie about faith and ideas that rocks everything we’ve been dealing with. Andrew Garfield may win the Oscar for best actor. But this is the Big Idea movie Hollywood has lacked for some time.
It’s strange, too, because the word out of Los Angeles on Sunday was that “Silence” was boring or something. I don’t know who those people could be who thought that. “Silence” is a meditation on theology, but it’s also a completely engrossing, absorbing movie in which Big Ideas are made accessible in dialogue and visuals to the point where I often found myself on the edge of my seat.
And that’s pretty interesting since this is faith based movie and I am neither Catholic nor Christian and don’t have a tremendous interest in Jesus. But “Silence” doesn’t require that– it’s a universal message that I think will be embraced by every intelligent moviegoer. Not only, there is some humor, and there is Scorsese violence including one scene where a man literally loses his head.
But this is Japan in the 1600s, and it’s a savage, brutal place where Christianity is being rebuked. “Silence” is based on the 1966 novel by Shūsaku Endō about two Portugese Jesuit priests (Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver) who are sent to Japan as missionaries. They are following in the footsteps of their mentor, played by Liam Neeson. Scorsese and screenwriter Jay Cocks do something really interesting here, because they are allowing everyone to speak in English but they are not English speakers. At one point it’s explained very elegantly that it’s Japanese and Portugese being spoken and that the priests are being translated by one of the Japanese.
Driver and Leeson are each very, very good but the movie hinges on Garfield. He’s in almost every scene. And what’s fascinating is that Garfield ( who is Jewish in real life by the way) is in the season’s other Christian movie, “Hacksaw Rdige.” But where that movie is hackneyed and dopey with heavy on the nose Catholic imagery, “Silence” is sublime. Garfield’s work in “Silence” is superior because of the writing and directing, and “Silence” is the movie for which he will get his Oscar nomination.
Scorsese says he’s been obsessed with “Silence” for about 40 years, and worked and worked to get it made. In between of course he became famous and celebrated for his gangster movies and remakes, gems like “The Age of Innocence.” I asked him last night, was this subject always on your mind? The answer was “Yes.” Scorsese’s own devout faith just blooms here in a way that casual fans of “Taxi Driver” or “Goodfellas” will not expect. Like one of those films, “Silence” moves– it’s certainly never boring.
I may be wrong. But this is what I think right now. This has been a good season for Oscar films and there are plenty– “La La Land,” “Manchester by the Sea,” “Lion,” “Moonlight,” “20th Century Women,” “Arrival,” “Sully.” But “Silence” is different, it’s the Big Picture. It’s a discussion of who we are and how we got here. In a world where religious persecution is more prevalent than ever, it’s also about who we can be.
One last thing: “Silence” features a Japanese actor named Issei Ogata who will be the Christoph Waltz of this film. He’s a total break out, and should get Best Supporting Actor nods. He doesn’t speak English, but we met him last night and he’s willing. He gets very special mention.
EXCLUSIVE The last time anyone heard about movie producer Daniel Adams he was on his way to prison. In 2012 he became the first producer ever to be convicted for tax credit fraud following the making of a little known project called “The Lightkeeper.” He served time at three different Massachusetts prisons, including Walpole/Cedar Junction, before securing release.
Now Adams’ name has resurfaced. Last week a new movie he’s producing in Georgia called “In an LA Minute” shut down in a Savannah second, two weeks into production. Adams was not only producing, he was directing too. The large cast included Kiersey Clemons (from the upcoming “The Flash”), Gabriel Byrne, Ned Bellamy, and Bob Balaban, all of whom were seen exiting Savannah with hopes of one day being paid for their work. (Mariel Hemingway was supposed to be in the movie, but a source says “She was too expensive.”)
The Savannah Film Commission office confirmed for me that the movie is shuttered. All queries are being routed to co producer Don Hauer in Los Angeles. If he turns up, I’ll update the story.
A source said, “They just came in while we were shooting and said we couldn’t meet payroll.”
It’s certainly a twist in Adams’ story. In May 2016, he and Nashville music producer Michael Flanders announced in Variety that they had a $50 million fund called Spiderworxx Media. “We are fully financing all of our films and are now actively making offers to actors for ‘An L.A. Minute’ and are looking forward to creating a full slate of films,” Flanders told Variety. No one questioned his statement.
Adams pleaded guilty in 2012 to ten counts of embezzlement- related charges and the tax credit fraud after five years of running what amounted to a Ponzi-type scheme. In 2014, when he was finally out of jail, he still had over $4 million in fines to pay to the state of Massachusetts as well as miscellaneous debts. It doesn’t sound like “In an LA Minute” will be resuming, which means new debts and accusations will be Adams in a New York minute.
UPDATE A source on the film says complaints by two crew members got the production shut down because they were told they wouldn’t be paid until next week. “It will get straightened out and everyone will be back,” the source says.
Kid Rock: I always liked him and he’s a nice guy. Carson Daly once told me: “He’s my best friend.” Kid Rock, aka Bob Richie, from Michigan, is now angling to be the Bruce Springsteen of the GOP. If– when– he’s invited to perform for Trump at the inauguration, he’ll be very lonely.
Why?
Kid Rock is now selling obnoxious, vulgar t shirts and merchandise on his website that are pro-Trump, anti-Blue State. One T shirt calls blue states “Dumbfuckistan.” Another: “God Guns Trump.”
Not funny. Not bright either. But I guess Richie doesn’t care. But why not cash in on his redneck appeal? He’s got nothing to lose. I’m sure the folks at Atlantic Records are thrilled. And maybe they really are. Maybe it’s just part of the effort to get the Time Warner-AT&T merger closed.
I’m very lucky because 30 years ago, by chance, my friend Martha Shulman, the great cookbook author, introduced me to John Morris and his writer wife Tana Hoban. They were all living in Paris. Tana, a very successful photographer and children’s author, died a few years ago. But John turns 100 today in Paris. The greatest photo editor– and a renowned photo journalist himself–has made it a historic century.
John was a star here in the States as a young man: he was photo editor for Life Magazine during World War II. When the war ended he became executive editor of his friend Robert Capa’s brand new Magnum Photo Agency. In his long and storied career, John also worked for the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Ladies Home Journal. If you say his name in real journalistic circles, the people who know ‘know.’ John Morris is a legend.
Think about it: he worked with Capa, with Cartier-Bresson, with all the greats. John is living history. He’s published many books to document his adventures. The one to get is “Get the Picture: A Personal History of Photojournalism.”
At least once a year I still visit with John in the Soho-like apartment in the Marais that he shared with Tana, his third wife. He was married to each wife for 20 years until their respective deaths. I didn’t know the other wives but Tana, the last, was a pistol, and they were madly in love. They were inveterate travelers and adventures, and Paris, Martha likes to say, was their oyster. Despite walking with a cane, John has a lovely lady friend in her 80s, still loves to travel and often lectures on his history, on Capa and Magnum, and the way photojournalism made World War II come alive. Nothing was ever the same.
In the thirty years since John settled in Paris, he’s been active in other ways, too– organizing and being an activist for Democrats Abroad. There are probably thousands of stories of meetings in the Morris apartment to protest everything from Reagan to the Bushes to Trump. But it hasn’t only been rabble rousing. In 2014, Andrea Mitchell featured him in a piece on NBC News on the 70th Anniversary of D Day. John dedicated a commemorative wreath at Normandy. He was just 97, so why not?
I don’t know if he’ll finish it, but John is working now on his grand opus, a huge volume of stories and photos. He’s the last link to a world that has since been digitized and minimized. He’s lived a beautiful life of achievement and public contribution, and as he made history so he’s become it, too.
