Bon Jovi is back. The group has moved to Island Records, and John Shanks has produced their new single. The title track from the album is “This House is Not For Sale,” and it’s a hit out of the box, catchy has hell. Of course. The album drops in October. Welcome come back, Jon and the boys!
Fox News Palace Coup Thwarted by Rupert Murdoch Who Names 2 Lieutenants as Co-Chiefs– Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
The Fox News palace coup by James and Lachlan Murdoch is over. The boys have lost. Rupert Murdoch has named two of his lieutenants, Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy, co-chiefs of Fox News.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
With Roger Ailes ousted, James and Lachlan looked like they might take over Fox News and clean house. A week ago, one source of mine said, “The whole second floor could go.”
Alas, just as in other countries ruled by despots, Fox News has stood back a revolution. Nothing will change. The people who were running the network under Ailes continue to run the network without Ailes. Everyone stays in place including the oft-mentioned Dianne Brandi, Ailes’s corporate lawyer. The people who know where the bodies were buried will keep running the cemetery.
New York Magazine’s intrepid Gabriel Sherman, meantime, points out that when Lachlan Murdoch was removed from his old job by Ailes running Fox TV stations in 2005, it was Abernethy who succeeded him. So Rupert, who we thought was drowsy from a long honeymoon with Mick Jagger’s ex, Jerry Hall, has rebuked his own kid again.
Wait til that Thanksgiving dinner!
Yusuf Cat Stevens Starts Tour Next Month– Here’s My 2006 Interview with Him
Cat Stevens– call him Yusuf– starts a short fall tour next month in Toronto. He plays New York for two nights– September 19th and 20th.
Much misunderstood, Yusuf remains a reluctant rock star. Here’s my 2006 interview with him. I hope we can reconnect this time around. I can’t believe a decade has passed!
from December 2006:
Cat Stevens is back. Well, his name now is Yusuf Islam, and we’ll call him that, but old habits are hard to break, and you know, he was our Cat for a long, long time.
Last night he returned to the U.S. and the stage, playing a nice long set at the Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center for invited guests including rocker Patti Smith and a heavy mix of folks from the media like New York Times pop critic Jon Pareles, filmmaker Albert Maysles, rock impresario David Spero and writer Daphne Merkin.
The show, taped for KCRW-FM, was interspersed with a conversation with that radio station’s Nic Harcourt.
But you know, it wasn’t until after the mesmerizing, emotional show that I got to ask Yusuf a tough question: Does he regret denouncing author Salman Rushdie and appearing to endorse the fatwa, or death sentence, leveled at him by Ayatollah Khomeini?
“I never said it,” he replied, smiling. He used his two index fingers to show polar opposites. “We were just poles apart,” he said of Rushdie. “We disagreed. But I never said such a thing.”
Nevertheless, Yusuf — who by then had been out of the spotlight for many years and had become a dark, mysterious distant figure — gained the hatred of American radio stations. There were mass bonfires of his albums staged by extremists. It was a bad time.
But Yusuf is far from being a dark, mysterious figure at all. At the Allen Room he was dressed in jeans, suede desert boots, a nice T-shirt and vest. His hair, once jet black and wavy, is straight, short and gray. He sports a scruffy gray beard as well.
He is Muslim by a choice he made in 1978 — ironic since his brother, also raised Greek Orthodox, converted to Judaism around the same time, or so I am told.
Yusuf is also slight, and in good shape considering he will turn 60 next spring. He has a wide smile, which makes him very charming still, and his singing voice, I am happy to report, is intact, as is his guitar playing.
When he opened his mouth to open with an old song, “The Wind,” there was an electric sensation sent through the room. No one’s heard his voice live since 1978. It was like an old friend had returned from the dead.
Still, he’s sorry about the Rushdie business.
“It was 17 years ago,” he said, shaking his head. Rushdie had criticized the Muslim religion in his book, “The Satanic Verses.” Many in Iran considered it blasphemy. Yusuf said to me, “All we want is peace.” Well, it was a heady time.
So how did Cat Stevens (born Steven Georgiou to a Greek father and Swedish mother) leave his career as a rock star and become a Muslim? The short answer is that he was swimming in Malibu and started to drown.
“I was drowning in Malibu,” he said, and he promised God that if he lived he would change his life. It was a big life, too, full of rock amenities like gorgeous girlfriends. Carly Simon was one before her marriage to James Taylor, and Stevens wrote “Lady D’Arbanville” about actress Patti D’Arbanville.
“I had to deflate myself,” Yusuf said to Harcourt last night in during an interlude in the concert. “I had to come back to life.”
One surprise: He said his mother actually chose his wife for him. “I had a choice of two women. She decided.”
On stage last night, with the New York skyline shining behind him, Yusuf mixed songs from his new album, “An Other Cup,” with old hits like “The Wind,” “Oh Very Young,” “Father and Son,” and “Peace Train” — which he dedicated to the memory of Ahmet Ertegun.
The new songs, especially “Indian Ocean,” which is about the 2004 tsunami, are melodically beautiful and lush. But the old songs really packed an unexpected punch. Yusuf’s long absence from the scene works well for him. Hearing his old music is like receiving a bottle of Fiji water in the desert.
But didn’t he miss us all those years, I asked?
“I had a family and a life, and I did a lot of charity work,” he said. Two years ago he picked up a guitar for the first time since his retirement thanks to his son, Muhammad (he’s inherited the hair, by the way).
“I said, ‘Hello, I know you,’” the singer recalled.
One reason he returned: “The Muslim world now is artless,” he said. “I wanted to show that there is creativity. It’s not grim.”
If we’re lucky, Yusuf will tour with his band, maybe to small venues. For now, though, he’s returning to London after doing a little publicity and testing the waters. My guess is he’ll be back soon, and he is very, very welcome.
Who knows? This may be a renaissance in the making. He says he recently spoke to Simon for the first time in years. “She called to say she’d named her new album ‘Into the White,’ after my song,” he said, proudly.
Ray Donovan Back for Fifth Season, But Not So Fast as Liev Schreiber Heads to Broadway
Good news and bad news for “Ray Donovan” fans (I count myself among them). Showtime has renewed the Liev Schreiber series for a fifth season. That’s the good news. The bad news: not so fast.
Schreiber is booked on Broadway from October through the end of January in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” with the great Janet McTeer. This will be a huge success and a wall to wall sell out ticket wise. If it is, then an extension would be in order.
Second, Schreiber had a tough negotiation, I’m told. “He wanted the show to move to New York,” a source told me. Schreiber and wife Naomi Watts are based in New York. “Ray Donovan” is set in L.A. To move it would be impossible, although some interior shooting could be done here.
In the end, I’m told, Showtime will compensate Schreiber nicely to come back west when “Liaisons” is over. But “Ray Donovan” probably can’t air until at least a year from now.
Some people who watch the Showtime show may not know it, but Schreiber is a great theater actor. So New Yorkers are going to be proprietary about keeping him here. Maybe Ray and his gang can move to Manhattan. We always need a new fixer!
Barbra Streisand Shows Why She’s a Legend With a Triumphant Return to Brooklyn in Front of A List Crowd
Barbra Streisand is one of a very small group of legends left– Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin– who are larger than life. She proved it again on Thursday night in a return to Brooklyn’s Barclay Center arena in front of A List crowd that included Clive Davis, Rosie O’Donnell, Audra McDonald, Norm Lewis, Ralph Lauren, and director Barry Levinson.
Streisand’s show was superior to her very good Brooklyn show four years ago. My only quibble is the very Las Vegas-y comedian magician who comes out in the middle of the proceedings so she can take an intermission. He was really really awful.
But the audience didn’t seem to mind, as they were getting their Barbra live in the flesh. singing at 74 with her unique instrument. What’s sort of amazing about Streisand is that it’s all live, warts and all, and she doesn’t give a hoot. Sometimes her high notes are shaggy, but more often than not she’s in full command. The middle notes and lows are breathtaking, and the tops still surprise. She’s in possession of something no one else, she’s had it for 60 years, and she knows it.
The first half of the show comprises bits of hits like “Stoney End” and “Enough is Enough.” She opens with “The Way We Were” and a lesser known Carole King song (“Being at War with Each Other”). She offers her own “Evergreen” and Barry Gibb’s “Woman In Love.” But the highlight of the 1st half of the show is Steven Sondheim’s “Children Will Listen” from “Into the Woods.” Streisand and Sondheim are a match made in heaven.
The second half of the show starts wobbly, with “Pure Imagination” (from “Willy Wonka”) and a really creepy duet with the very dead Anthony Newley on “Who Do I Turn To?” Natalie Cole once sang with her dead dad, Nat King Cole, and it was just fine. But this should not have become a trend. If you didn’t get to sing with someone while they were alive, then too bad. Don’t do it now.
But once that escapade was over, Streisand pulled out all the stops. Her version of Sondheim’s “Losing My Mind” is exceptional. It’s on her forthcoming album as a bonus track, but it should be front and center. Movie actor Patrick Wilson came out and sang Sondheim’s “Loving You” from “Passion” with Barbra and was so impressive– why isn’t he a leading man on Broadway?
The final part of the show unleashed The Legend– “How Lucky Can You Get,” “People,” “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “Climb Every Mountain”– with special guest Jamie Foxx, plus “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and a sublime reading of Rodgers and Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time it Was.” This section is worth the price of the ticket (mine as a free press ticket, but I would pay again just for this stuff). I actually thought Foxx would overwhelm her on “Climb” but Barbra I think surprised herself and soared.
The show is well written, with just enough shmaltz, pro-Clinton and anti-Trump jabs that you feel like you’ve spent time with this great star. Barbra was never hip and she isn’t now. She’s not meant to be. She was the bridge between Tin Pan Alley and the British Invasion. This show plays to her strengths, to her hits, to “Funny Girl” and her uncanny reading of the American songbook. And just when you think you’ve got it, she’ll throw in new phrasing that surprises and thrills. So I forgive the magician because Streisand made magic.
Hugh Grant on Meryl Streep’s Near-Sightedness, And Why He Wasn’t in “Jerry Maguire”
In “Florence Foster Jenkins,” Hugh Grant has the best role of his career as the loving but philandering husband of the real-life 1930’s New York society matron and aspiring opera singer, played by Meryl Streep. Streep resembles Margaret Dumont from the Marx brothers’ films in a role that evokes equal part pathos and humor.
Grant was the guest of honor at a BAFTA event in a wide ranging conversation about his career, which took off twemty two years ago with “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”
The first question was about “Florence Foster Jenkins,” which opens Friday.
The BAFTA interviewer asked Grant, “You’ve been somewhat less of a constant presence in the last few years but this is a major part opposite Meryl Streep. What made you decide to do this particular movie?”
“Well you’re right. I was doing other things. I was doing politics. And I seemed to have a child a week,” Grant deadpanned. (He is a father of four from two girlfriends.)
Grant added, “But then Stephen Frears kept saying, ‘Let’s do a film.’ And I thought he was just drunk and then to my great surprise sent me a script that was genuinely funny and moving and I liked the sort of slight grotesque element of it. And it had this extraordinary, nuanced, complicated part for me, which is something that I’m not accustomed to,” said Grant, adding, “And there’s a small matter of Meryl Streep.”
Asked what his working relationship with Streep was like and whether they had to iron anything out, “No,” said Grant. “But it helped when I realized she couldn’t see me at all. She’s — I don’t think I’m revealing anything she wouldn’t reveal — she’s very short sighted [near sighted, in American],” Grant said. “She’s not wearing glasses in this film. And she doesn’t like to wear lenses because the camera can pick them up, so actually, even if you were Meryl Streep and I was Hugh Grant,” the actor put his hands two feet apart, “I could be Denzel Washington and she wouldn’t recognize me.”
Asked whether he could tell whether a movie script would turn into a good movie, Grant said he had that hunch when he read the screenplay of “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”
“I certainly thought that when I read that script, that bizarrely brilliant script… I remember calling my agent and saying, ‘I think there’s been a mistake, you sent me a good script.’”
“That happened one more time in my career when they sent me ‘Jerry Maguire.’ And they said, ‘Sorry, it was a mistake. It was meant to go to Tom Cruise.”
One of Grant’s most bizarre roles was “Cloud Atlas” in 2012 by the Wachowski siblings. His roles involved multiple time zones, six characters and six hours in make up.
Explaining why he took the role, Grant said, “Well just that during this phase of really not doing many films, occasionally oddities come up that are just too fascinating to turn down. This one by the Wachowski brothers – now sisters – came up with this project… six characters in six different time zones and it was so fascinating.” Grant said actually he was to play five characters and he told the Wachowskis he’d do it if they gave him six.
“I didn’t enjoy sitting in makeup for six hours every day,” Grant complained. “I thought in five of the roles of the roles I was pretty good, but in one of them I was shocking. I thought I was very bad as the cannibal,” he said. “I remember standing on a mountain top, with no hair and tattoos, and I was supposed to lick my lips” at the prospect of eating a human being. To get motivated, Grant said one of the Wachowskis kept saying, “C’mon man, you’re like a panther, you’re really, really hungry!”
Someone in the audience asked Grant about his dancing scene in “Love Actually” (2003), where he plays the Prime Minister and dances in his executive quarters when he thinks no one is watching. Did he adlib the dance?
Grant peered out at the audience and put on his glasses. “I can see you,” he told the woman in the audience. “I’m the opposite of Meryl.”
“Yes, very much so,” Grant said about the famous dance scene in the film. “I pride myself on my choreography… in ‘Music and Lyrics’ I invented that dance that later became a sensation in the Far East,” said Grant, joking about the Korean dance craze Gangnam Style.
Grant went on to say that the dance scene in Curtis’s “Love Actually” was not “a fun experience.”
“He (Curtis) wanted me to rehearse it. I was too frightened so I kept making excuses. We never rehearsed it,” said Grant. “That’s not easy at 7 in the morning when you’re a cross middle-aged Englishman, wiggling your ass, stone cold sober. It was an appalling experience.”
As the end of the hour conversation, I asked Grant how he managed to keep his deadpan facial expressions while Meryl screeched or musical notes went flat, and he admitted it was a challenge.
“I did struggle. There’s a scene in that film where I have to be very fierce to people who are laughing at her at the concert,” he said. “I have to give them hard stares and tell them off but in fact I am absolutely” killing myself to keep from laughing.
Review: Seth Rogen Throws a Hilarious “Sausage Party” For Foodies and Foes Alike
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg get it completely weirdly otherworldly right with their singularly unique brilliantly funny, dumb and always clever the R rated animated Sony’s “Sausage Party.” They put it all in, (yes including kitchen sinks) and wisely stay in their ambitious lane, run their own otherworldly artistic race and win hands down.
Rogen adeptly weaves in his trademark homage to stoners everywhere, combined with slasher/horror and over the top orgy humor. Plus, his inherent sweetness dribbles through all his glorious, eccentric characters. The story centers on Frank (Rogen), a packaged sausage, and his neighbor, s hot dog bun Brenda (Kristen Wiig). All their foodie friends think they are being chosen by the humans to go to the coveted ‘Promised Land.’ But when they realize that life outside their supermarket is nothing to wish for, they want to make sure that their pals, including a hilarious Salma Hayek as Theresa the Lesbian Taco, Paul Rudd, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill and many more, are all saved from the dreaded human consumption.
Rogen, along with his co-writer and longtime partner Evan Goldberg, have said that for years they have wanted to make this film. How right they were. The film surprises you because apart from being hysterically jaw dropping funny, its’ ideologies and themes throughout are somehow inexplicably meaningful. All this is why “Sausage Party” is so brilliant, a true massive cult film for the ages.
Michael Jackson’s Killer, Dr. Conrad Murray, “Publishes” E Book And No One Buys It
Someone asked me today if the “book” written by Dr. Conrad Murray, the man who killed Michael Jackson, had been published.
I had to look on Amazon.
It does seem like Murray released his e book “This Is It! The Secret Lives of Dr. Conrad Murray and Michael Jackson” on July 26th.
The public has responded with a gigantic Yawn. “Secret Lives” is currently number 25,408 on amazon.com, on their paid Kindle chart.
I didn’t download it, and won’t pay for it. I guess hardly anyone else will, either.
If you know anyone who actually did do that, ask them to email me at showbiz411@gmail.com
It really doesn’t matter what Murray writes. He was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. He should be in jail still, but was released because of overcrowding. His medical license has been suspended or revoked in the states where he practiced. The book will never see hardcover.
Marvin Gaye’s Co-Writer Sues Ed Sheeran: “Thinking Out Loud” is “Let’s Get it On” (No Kidding)
Ed Sheeran is finally being sued over “Thinking Out Loud.” From the moment I heard that song, I said it was “Let’s Get it On” by Marvin Gaye. Now the estate of Gaye’s co-writer and producer Ed Townsend is suing Sheeran over the song. It’s about time.
According to Reuters, the lawsuit says: “The Defendants copied the ‘heart’ of ‘Let’s’ and repeated it continuously throughout ‘Thinking,'” the lawsuit said. “The melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic compositions of ‘Thinking’ are substantially and/or strikingly similar to the drum composition of ‘Let’s.'”
I’m surprised there isn’t more of this, frankly. Bruno Mars’s “Locked out of Heaven” and Nico and Vinz’s “Am I Wrong” each sound like Sting songs so much that when they start playing on the radio, that’s what you think they are. The pop music world is now riddled with copies, songs that steal a “vibe” and so on of original hits. When you hear an actually good new song, you’re surprised someone thought of it.
“Thinking Out Loud” has annoyed me from Day 1. Good luck to Townsend’s heirs. By the way, I just read that Townsend, who died in 2003, earned a Purple Heart during the Korean War. Just sayin’…
Also, if you’re young, or you’ve forgotten, go listen to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On” and “What’s Going On” albums. They are breathtaking. I also really love “Here My Dear,” which was his divorce pay off album to Anna Gordy. He was such a genius.
Marvin:
Ed Sheeran:
TV: “Big Bang Theory” Could Go Past 10 Seasons, Says “Howard” aka Simon Helberg
Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant are the big names in Paramount’s “Florence Foster Jenkins,” opening Friday to raves and Oscar buzz.
But the other Big Name is from the Big Bang Theory– Simon Helberg, aka Howard, one of the beloved nerds of the CBS hit sitcom. At last night’s premiere of “Florence Foster Jenkins.” Helberg was watching the clock. He was scheduled to fly out of New York at 3:45 am to be in Los Angeles this morning. The 10th season of “Big Bang Theory” is about to commence.
Is there an 11th season for the show? “I suppose there is,” he said. “A lot of people will come back and want to come back if asked,” he said. “And I would be one of them.”
Helberg is the breakout star of “FFJ” — directed to perfection by Stephen Frears— as he plays piano in the film himself, in all his scenes. Nothing is dubbed. Did he have real classical training? “I played in rock bands and popular music,” he said with a self-effacing shrug. “And I kind transitioned that to classical opera.”
He can take more credit than that. Helberg is totally convincing as Meryl Streep’s accompanist — or rather Florence’s. Was he intimidated by being in so many scenes with the World’s Greatest Actress? “I was before I met her,” he told me. “And then you realize how normal she is.”
The “Florence Foster Jenkins” premiere was one of the more laid back I’ve been to in quite a while. Streep and husband Don Gummer mixed and mingled at Brasserie 8 1/2 with everyone, and Meryl was gracious enough to take those annoying selfies everyone wants. She was especially happy to see old friends like one time drama school roommate John Rothman (who’s starring in Tig Notaro‘s Amazon series “One Mississippi”) and the great Carmen DeLavallade (widow of the famed Geoffrey Holder).
I was happy to see Meryl’s sister in law, Emmy winning actress Maeve Kinkead, who played Vanessa Chamberlain on “The Guiding Light” for nigh on 30 years. Kinkead tells me her first hook of poetry is coming from this January from the prestigious Barrow Street Press. It’s called “A Dangling House” and you can read one of the poems here. As she was finishing her run on “Guiding Light,” Maeve graduated from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers with a degree in Poetry in 2008. This is quite an accomplishment. Bravo!
Also at the “FFJ” premiere: Nina Arianda, hilarious in the film, as always, plus “Crash” director Paul Haggis, and a rare sighting of Cars leader Ric Ocasek and his model wife Paulina Porizkova. They’ve been married since 1989– can you believe it? She must have been just what he needed!