Oh yeah, it’s longish. But ffwd to around 9 minutes when this gang– Lin Manuel Miranda, Jane Krakowski, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the amazing Audra McDonald perform “One Day More” from “Les Miz.” You’ll be clapping at your desk.
The Tonys are this Sunday on CBS at 8pm.
Sally Field is coming to Broadway next winter. Surprise!
I told you back on February 23rd that two time Oscar winner Sally would star in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” with Sam Gold directing. Sally last appeared in the play 12 years ago in a Kennedy Center production directed by Greg Mosher.
The new production will co-star Finn Wittrock, hot as a pistol after his tours of duty in “American Horror Story.” Finn co-starred with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield in Mike Nichols’ “Death of a Salesman.”
This production will also bring back to the stage Joe Mantello, who’s been busy directing “The Humans” and “The Last Ship” among other Broadway shows.
Broadway next winter is shaping up– Cate Blanchett will be there at the same time.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has just voiced his support on Twitter to Judge Curiel, the so called Mexican judge Donald Trump has been attacking. (Gonzalo Curiel was born in Indiana.) Trump says he can’t get a fair trial in the Trump University case from Curiel because he– Trump– wants to put up a wall between the US and Mexico. He’s offended all Mexicans.
But of course Judge Curiel is American. And now Schwarzenegger is calling him a “hero.”
What’s really weird is that Arnold is the new host of “Celebrity Apprentice” and is essentially Trump’s employee. What’s next?
Judge Curiel is an American hero who stood up to the Mexican cartels. I was proud to appoint him when I was Gov. https://t.co/ADLCBXw57Q
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) June 6, 2016
THE TONY AWARDS are coming this Sunday on CBS at 8pm. Yes, it’s all about “Hamilton.” But it’s got to be about a few other things, too. The show at the Beacon is going to be off the hook and very exciting. And Barbra Streisand is coming!
If “The Humans” wins Best Play, I’ll be disappointed. But it seems like that’s where we’re headed. The Best Play, in my opinion, is Durira Gurai’s “Eclipsed.” That is a theater experience, so exciting and fresh. The subject matter– these women imprisoned in Liberia, finding their freedom–opens us to new worlds. The actresses are superior, and not just Lupita Nyong’o.
“The Humans” is well acted and directed but it feel like an off Broadway production. Stephen Karam’s set up of a family revealing secrets to each other at Thanksgiving has frankly, been done to death. And these secrets aren’t at all as mesmerizing as the ones from O’Neill or Miller, let alone “August: Osage County.”
Most of the play’s so called secrets are telegraphed from the beginning of the 95 minutes (with no intermission). The father (Reed Birney) tells enough in the first few minutes that you know he’s lost his job or all his money, and that something has gone wrong with his job at a Catholic school.
The rest of the family consists of his wife (Jane Houdyshell), the grandma in wheelchair (Lauren Klein), the two daughters (Sarah Steele as the cute one, Cassie Beck as the Lesbian with stomach problems) and Arian Moayed as the older boyfriend with a trust fund and sleep problems.
Much of the play circles around electrical problems in the crappy duplex basement Chinatown apartment. Apparently, no one can go to the corner and buy lightbulbs, so little by little the lamps blow out and then the stage is drenched in darkness. Is this supposed to a statement that We Are All Powerless? Yes, typical American family except we’ve met them before. I think Joe Mantello’s direction is good that it makes us think the material is better than it is.
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF doesn’t look like it will win Best Revival of a Musical, as “She Loves Me” and “The Color Purple” seem to be the favorites. But my second trip to see Danny Burstein last week as Tevye was more than rewarding. Burstein is better than ever. Jessica Hecht as Golde seems to have grown by leaps and bounds. The sets, the dancing, and the songs are a masterwork woven together. Some women from the Dominican Republic sat next to me and front of me, they were all crying. “Fiddler” is the ultimate Immigration Musical, the anti-Trump opera of all time. This show is rightly a Classic now, well beyond any of its competitors. Ironically, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock wrote the songs for “She Loves Me,” also. It’s their secondary work, and it may beat their primary one. How weird. See this show without fail.
I received an anonymous tip early Monday morning: Scott Rudin was out of “Groundhog Day” and would no longer be the producer. The musical based on the movie is starting in London and then moves here. “Matthew Warchus is fed up with his antics,” my spy wrote of the famed director (“Matilda”). Well, may be. Scott Rudin isn’t easy. But he has a lot on his plate already for 2016-17. Rudin will live without “Groundhog Day.” And he has to deal with all the changes at “Shuffle Along” including replacing a departing star with a singer who doesn’t act, a choreographer who’s coming into the show in a role that doesn’t exit, and a lack of story for the second act. Groundhogs, he doesn’t need.
All hail The Monkees.
In pure sales– CDs and digital downloads– the 50 year old group beat Adele, Prince and Ariana Grande this week on the charts.
The Monkees’ new album– “Good Times!”– sold a little over 24,000 copies and finished at number 8 for the first week on the charts.
They added about one thousand streams and finished at number 15 when streamed play was counted in according to hitsdailydouble.com.
For one week, “Good Times!” was number 1 on the amazon.com bestsellers. They’re at number 3 now as Paul Simon’s new “Stranger to Stranger” and the Broadway “Hamilton” score moved up to 1 and 2.
At the Monkees show last week at Town Hall, Micky Dolenz told me: “I’ll be happy to make the top 40.”
The number 8 finish is quite an accomplishment. It also means that Monkees fans, who are older, wanted to own the album not just passively listen to it on their phones. The royalty rate is higher for actual sales, too, than for streaming.
Last night, HBO bailed 9,000 Texans out of medical debt.
The cabler let their brilliant weekly news star, John Oliver, buy $15 million worth of medical debt from Encore Capital for $60,000. And then Oliver forgave the debt. All those Texans are getting letters saying they no longer owe various medical bills.
Oliver — on fire last night about Trump and other issues– gave a scathing editorial about debt collection companies. He revealed how easy it was for his staff to start their own company, just with a website, which enabled them to solicit offers for bulk debt purchase.
Using the invented name CARP, Oliver bought a package from debt from Encore to prove how slimy the business is– in the files he received social security numbers and other personal information for 9,000 people Encore had been dunning. CARP stands for Central Asset Recovery Professionals — and carp, Oliver pointed out, are bottom feeding fish.
We just made TV history! Thanks for watching! Or…congratulations for watching? pic.twitter.com/KnVMEa95Km
— Last Week Tonight (@LastWeekTonight) June 6, 2016
At that point, Oliver could have started dunning the customers himself. Instead, he and HBO turned the whole thing over to a firm that forgives debt without incurring tax fees.
Oliver billed it as the biggest TV giveaway of all time as he was relenting $15 million. But he and HBO had only spent $60,000 to buy it. So really, although he mocked Oprah Winfrey’s old auto giveaways, Oliver’s was a great act of generosity and mischief but maybe really not the biggest giveaway ever.
Still, it proved many points– not the least of which is how easy it is to buy junk.
Holy moley. Kris Kristofferson is still out there performing and recording. Even though he’s talked openly about his memory issues, Kris hasn’t let anything stop him. I’m impressed. Here’s a video from this year– he’s still got it.
Now comes word that Kristofferson will release “The Cedar Creek Sessions,” recorded in 2014 in Austin, Texas. The album hits stores and online June 17th. There’s even a duet with Sheryl Crow.
When you see him Kris tells you right away his memory is bad, that he’s suffering from some kind of memory loss due to playing football in his youth or other blows to the head. I guess we won’t know until he’s gone and his brain is examined for CTE. But in the meantime, he’s upright, cogent, singing and playing like crazy. Mazel tov! You can see how happy he is–he’s enjoying himself regardless. This is much to be admired. He’s a role model.
KK has a bunch of dates booked for this month and September and November later this year.
Cedar Creek Sessions
Track Listing:
Volume One
1. Duvalier’s Dream
2. The Loving Gift (with special guest Sheryl Crow)
3. The Sabre and the Rose
4. The Law is for the Protection of the People
5. It No Longer Matters What I Do
6. Stagger Mountain Tragedy
7. The Wife You Save
8. Lay Me Down and Love the World Away
9. The Bigger the Fool (The Harder the Fall)
10. Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down
11. Spooky Lady’s Revenge
12. Forever In Your Love
13. Winter
Volume Two
1. Darby’s Castle
2. Me and Bobby McGee
3. Broken Freedom Song
4. Casey’s Last Ride
5. Billy Dee
6. Easter Island
7. For the Good Times
8. Help Me Make It Through the Night
9. Jody and the Kid
10. Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)
11. Risky Business
12. To Beat the Devil
We’re not crying for Tom Hanks. He’s very wealthy and has two Oscars. But his box office run of three hits in a row– “Captain Phillips,” “Saving Mr. Banks” and “Bridge of Spies” — has ended with a whimper.
Hanks’s worst box office ever has occurred with the current “A Hologram for the King.” The Tom Tykwer feature has made just $4.1 million since its release on April 22nd. I doubt most people in the U.S. know it exists. The film has no foreign ticket sales either. It’s dead.
“Hologram” was released by Roadside Attractions, which has a decent reputation for sinking its films. They’re having a modest (nice way of putting it) success with “Hello My Name is Doris” starring Sally Field, which has scrapped together $14 million. Roadside is stymied by lack of marketing and publicity despite a nice owner, Howard Cohen.
Right now Roadside (which I like to call Roadkill) has a good Whit Stillman film called “Love and Friendship” which looks like it may already be in decline with $7 million at the box office. It had what I called a stealth opening. Next up is “Genius” with Colin Firth and Jude Law, and Nicole Kidman in a strong supporting role. It has a 42 on Rotten Tomatoes. (I’m told “Genius” would have been better off on HBO.)
For Hanks, “Hologram” is a shocking low. You’d have to go back to 1990– some 26 years– to “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” which made around $16 million– of all the movies he’s headlined or starred in. Even the terrible “Larry Crowne” made $35 million back in 2011. (That was a bad year for Tom, who also starred in stinkers “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and “Cloud Atlas.”)
Tom will rise like a phoenix from these Roadside ashes in the fall, with “Sully” (he plays hero Sully Sullenberger) and Ron Howard’s “Inferno” (based on Dan Brown’s bestseller). “Hologram” will play on airplanes and head to cable as an anomaly in his long, storied career.
I wrote this back on March 22, 2010– a report from the annual celebrity Fight Night that raised millions over the years for Parkinson’s Disease research. It was all done in the name of Muhammad Ali, who appeared at the yearly dinners less and less as time went by, waved to the audience, and little by little was unable to speak.
Here’s my report from 2010. The following year, 2011, Champ skipped the Friday night dinner and only saw a handful of notables at the big dinner.
From 2010:
I always liked Reba McEntire, but get this: on Saturday night in Phoenix, at the Muhammad Ali Celebrity Fight Night concert and dinner, three bidders spent a total of $900,000 to have dinner with her.
The winners were Bill Austin, of the Starkey Hearing Foundation; Bob Parsons, of GoDaddy; and self made philanthropist Walter Scott, one of Warren Buffet’s childhood buddies.
Each spent $300,000 to have a meal with Reba, and presumably, her husband and manager Narvell Blackstock. Each of these men actually went to spent hundreds of thousands more during a live auction that raised, all told, over $5 million for research into Parkinson’s Disease.
There were plenty more exciting bids, including $70,000 to hear R&B legend Sam Moore sing his most famous hit, “Soul Man,” with Randy Jackson playing bass, and comedian Chris Tucker singing and goofing along.
Let me tell you: Chris Tucker does a very exact imitation of Michael Jackson doing “Billie Jean.” I am told he is very keen on playing an R&B great like Jackie Wilson or Otis Redding on the big screen. From the looks of it, he could do it. Brett Ratner, where are you?
Record producer and songwriter David Foster emceed the evening, the second in a row over the weekend, with more performances by Kris Kristofferson, Jessi Colter, Reba, comedienne Melissa Peterman, the Canadian Tenors, and a special appearance by Eagles front man Glenn Frey. The afterparty music was supplied by John Corbett and his band, with his beau, Bo Derek, dancing along. In the all star band: music greats Nathan East and Greg Phillinganes.
Others in the audience included baseball great Dave Winfield and stars like Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald and women’s basketball great Nancy Lieberman. During the day on Saturday, by the way, the latter two had a one on one at a local basketball court. What was the score? “No score,” Larry said. “We were just having fun.”
Best quote of the night, from Glenn Frey, who told the audience: “Back in 1970, Don Henley, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther and I hit on every waitress at the Troubador. But they were only interested in one guy: Kris Kristofferson.”
As for Muhammad Ali: his Parkinson’s is severe. He can walk, with assistance, but tires easily. He does not speak very much at all, and remained silent throughout the presentation given by wife Lonnie. He is mostly attended to by Lonnie’s sister, who is his trusted caregiver. However, say friends: “His mind is all there.” Ali simply suffers from waging a war against Parkinson’s. But his Foundation is now world famous, and a cure gets closer and closer.
Before Whitney Houston turned it into her anthem, “The Greatest Love of All” was sung by George Benson for a biopic of Muhammad Ali called “The Greatest.”
Linda Creed and Michael Masser wrote the song (which inadvertently nicked 24 bars from Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘If You Could Read My Mind”). Benson had an R&B hit with it from the soundtrack on Arista Records. When Whitney came along a few years later, Clive Davis and Gerry Griffiths had her re-record it for her first album. The rest is history.
Ring Lardner Jr. wrote the screenplay for “The Greatest” based on Ali’s autobiography. Tom Gries directed. Ali played himself. The movie co-starred Ernest Borgnine and John Marley.