Support independent journalism, free from the trades and other publications that are part of the tinsel town machine.
For 12 years, Showbiz411.com has been covering Hollywood, Broadway, the music business and the business of celebrity. Ads are our main source of funding, but contributions (not tax exempt) from readers who enjoy the scoops, exclusives, and fact based reports are always welcome and very appreciated. To inquire about ads, email us at showbiz411@gmail.com.
You’d think that as the contest narrows and the singers are zeroing in on the end, “American Idol” would increase its ratings. It was doing a little better for a while.
But now, with “Empire” gone as its follow up, “Idol” is in trouble. Last night they scored a mere 8.34 million total viewers, and a 1.7 in the key demo.
Just two weeks ago, with “Empire” at its zenith, “Idol” had almost 10 million viewers and a 2.7 in the key demo.
Where did everyone go? It seems like the “Idol” viewers were just waiting around for “Empire” and now that it’s gone, so are they.
And it’s too bad because there are good contestants this season. But the party may be over.
“Downton Abbey” is coming to an end. The PBS phenom will have one last season that broadcasts this fall in the UK and in January 2016 here.
Here’s the official statement:
“Millions of people around the world have followed the journey of the Crawley family and those who serve them for the last five years,” said executive producer Gareth Neame. “Inevitably there comes a time when all shows should end and Downton is no exception. We wanted to close the doors of Downton Abbey when it felt right and natural for the storylines to come together and when the show was still being enjoyed so much by its fans. We can promise a final season full of all the usual drama and intrigue, but with the added excitement of discovering how and where they all end up…”
The story of the Crawleys will come to an end in 1925, when the 20s are still roaring and no one knows the bad things that are coming in just a few years. You can sort of guess what will happen: Matthew Goode’s Henry Talbott will marry Lady Mary, Maggie Smith’s Violet will make one more nasty quip and her servants will kill her; Edith will move to London with Marigold and take many lovers; Branson will return from Boston married to someone named Bouvier or Fitzgerald; Rose will come back from New York now as an Orthodox Jew. Downton will be carved up into small lots, with Lord Grantham selling used cars.
How will PBS keep people from watching the UK feed? No one’s going to wait for January.
You wouldn’t think this is possible. But Dan Pritzker’s $100 million jazz movie “Bolden!” is re-shooting again. Pritzker is from the Hyatt Hotels family and has money to burn. In the mission of making his epic masterpiece, a “Citizen Kane” of jazz, he’s spent well over $100 million to make a movie about obscure jazz legend Buddy Bolden.
Originally, Anthony Mackie starred as Bolden. He shot an entire movie with Pritzer. But then Pritzker took so long to put the movie together– and then didn’t like it–that Mackie was too old to come back for re-shoots. So Pritzker started all over again, this time with Gary Carr, the actor who played the jazz musician in “Downton Abbey.”
Now Pritzker is looking for an actor to play the older Buddy Bolden. Instead of getting a great makeup artist, Pritzker is looking for someone who resembles Carr at age 65. If they find the actor, he’ll play a scene in which Buddy Bolden is an insane asylum. Sounds like fun!
The “Bolden!” adventure began in 2007, when George W. Bush was president of the United States and “Empire” was just a diner on the West Side. In June 2014, I told you that Pritzker–whose cousin Gigi Pritzker has made 15 movies since then ranging from good (Rabbit Hole, Way Way Back) to the awful (Mortdecai) to the well intended (Rosewater)– was looking for actresses who had a “fearless acceptance of full nudity” “simulated sex acts.”
I guess to be admired is Dan Pritzker’s persistence. Maybe this is how the pyramids were built.
How to get away with making a movie during hiatus: much awarded actress (two Tonys, one SAG Award) Viola Davis is jumping back into movies before she returns to Shonda Rhimes’s hit show. She’s going to star in “Custody,” directed by James Lapine, the famed author of “Into the Woods.”
Lapine has not directed a feature film since the clever Michael J. Fox film “Life with Mikey” back in 1993. But he’s been steady winner and nominee at the Tony Awards over the last 30 years. He also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for writing “Sunday in the Park with George” for Stephen Sondheim.
Davis is enmeshed in nefarious activities on “Murder,” but she’s going to get a change of pace in “Custody.” She plays Judge Martha Sherman, who presides over the custody case of a young woman (Catalina Sandino Moreno, Oscar nominee for “Maria Full of Grace”) trying to keep her children. Casting has begun to put together the large cast, including the judge’s husband.
Lauren Versel and Katie Mustard are producing with Davis’s production company, Juvee, run by the star’s astute husband Julius Tennon. Juvee has a lot of other projects coming, including one for Davis to play beloved Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan.
I’m for anything with Viola Davis. She’s in the Top Five of all actresses anywhere.
Is it 1985 all over again? Luxe is back in Manhattan, the over the top gross kind that led to the 1987 stock market crash and a whole re-thinking of our lives.
Luxe is certainly back at the new Baccarat Hotel, into which I stumbled yesterday. Owned by the people who make the crystal, this amazing ode to opulence features $20 million in Baccarat crystal chandeliers and other pieces.
But what stands out in the massive lounge and lobby area on the second floor are a dozen or chairs covered in coyote. I do not mean faux coyote. I mean, real coyote pelts, whole ones, like you’re sitting on a full sized coyote’s fur.
Creepy? Yes. And not just because of animal rights. First of all while the pelts are soft, the chairs are hard. It’s not so comfortable. Second, yes, ok, the idea of sitting on a murdered animal in this way is even different than, say, sitting on a leather couch. Leather is at least processed and tooled, tanned, etc. This is really like sitting on an animal sans his body.
I asked someone who worked for the hotel about this. “Well, coyotes aren’t so nice,” he said.
In the bar, where the gigantic Baccarat chandeliers hang, I asked a woman who was sitting with friends what she thought about all this. She told me that Baccarat is going to open another hotel in Manhattan “that’s all green, and very PC. This one, though, I imagine that PETA is coming any minute.”
The Baccarat Hotel is on West 53rd St. between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has a recessed entrance, and a fire burning next to its door in a set back window. There’s no name, and no flags. The smallest rooms start at $814.
The real affront is that the hotel took the place of the 53rd Street Library, a popular branch of the NYPL. Under an agreement with the city, Baccarat is adding a tiny version of the old branch downstairs and next door.
Meanwhile upstairs, they’re serving a two ounce glass of Macallan M single malt scotch for $900– Nine hundred dollars, yes. So far, says the bartender, no one’s ordered it. But the hotel has only been open one week.
Just the idea of someone sipping a $900 drink on a dead coyote is hilarious and awful and completely detestable. And that this replaced a building of ideas makes it all the worse. But this is what life was like in the mid 80s. People have short memories.
photo of Coyote chair c2015 Showbiz411
There must be some special magic set aside in heaven for March 25th. Both Elton John and Aretha Franklin were born on this day. Kind of amazing! Happy birthday to both of these great, ageless musical geniuses!
To honor Aretha, pick up a copy of her Divas album. For Sir Elton, make a donation to the Elton John AIDS Foundation. And listen to good music all day long!
Debbie Harry, aka Deborah Harry, is going to be 70 years old on July 1st. She could teach a thing or two to Madonna, who’ll be 57 this summer, about aging gracefully and still appealing to fans of all ages.
Last night, Debbie opened her first ever cabaret stint at the Cafe Carlyle, legendary home of the late Bobby Short and Elaine Stritch (and where the cheesecake melts in your mouth). The frontwoman for Blondie appeared only with a keyboardist/programmer/guitarist named Matt Katz-Bohen, who works on and off with Blondie. Debbie, with those stunning cheek bones and a full mane of blonde hair, wore a simple long back skirt, pleated, and a chic black jacket. Otherwise it was just her voice, and the smallest room she’s worked in since CBGB back in the day.
The trick to Debbie’s set, which excluded all Blondie hits, was a repertoire of songs pulled from later, less well known solo albums and the last, forgotten Blondie CD (which was excellent but murdered by its distributor). Her dreamy, ethereal voice, which sometimes finds unexpected deepness, was in fine form. So was the singer, who has a natural nonchalance, and quick irreverence. With so many hits and many cult followings, Debbie Harry has nothing to prove. And yet she proved a lot.
Debbie is an astute curator of songs. She offered a couple of her minor solo hits– “French Kissing in the USA” and “In Love with Love,” as well as “Strike Me Pink” (which someone should cover again– it’s a really good single). Did you know “French Kissing” was written by TV Producer Chuck Lorre when he was known as Chuck Levine? Really.
She told the audience, “We’ve been rehearsing a lot, I’m a little rough around the edges.” Nonsense. Harry has a nice, effortless quality that will serve her well during her Carlyle run. I wouldn’t mind going back in a few days to see how she’s doing. I really enjoyed a song called “Kiss and Tell,” and another one called “Lucky Jim,” which she explained was not named for Kingsley Amis’s novel. There was also a clever and poignant medley of “I Cover the Waterfront” mashed up with Moby’s “New York, New York.”
Harry stayed away from Blondie, although I might suggest one or two songs from that catalog. Julia Fordham recently turned “Call Me” into a slow jazz number; Harry could try it. And “Sunday Girl” seems like the perfect cabaret song. But it’s her choice, and she could teach a few things to Madonna– whom she preceded by many years as the Queen of Downtown music–how to age and get away with it: Keep it simple, and aim to your peers. Debbie Harry sings and speaks from a reality and honesty; you get it right away. There’s no artifice. I’ll bet we hear an album connected to this show in the near future. It would be welcome.
Madonna didn’t beat herself this week. Her “Rebel Heart” dropped 80% in its second week on the charts, falling from number 2 to number 16. “Rebel Heart” sold 22,800 copies the week after its debut. When it launched, it sold around 120,00 copies. Her last album, “MDNA” had an 86% drop in its second week. So it’s a win-lose situation. This is the second biggest chart drop. On this week’s hitsdailydouble chart, Luke Bryan’s latest album dropped 63%
“Rebel Heart” suffers from the same problem as its recent predecessors– no hit single. The songs are good, and well produced. But no one’s looking for a hit. Madonna was once queen of the pop singles. But that’s when she had real tunesmiths writing for her. I heard her tell Howard Stern that she didn’t go back to songwriters like Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, who wrote “Like a Virgin” because she didn’t like their other songs. How utterly ridiculous. They had a dozen other hits without Madonna.
But gone gone gone are Patrick Leonard, Steven Bray, William Orbit, and all the people who made hits for Madonna. In their place now are production teams who come and go, and have no vested interest in her success. They are also not radio friendly. After Daft Punk did so well with Nile Rodgers, who produced “Like a Virgin,” she should have asked him to come back. “Rebel Heart” has interesting lyrics, but you can’t sing along or dance to them.
Madonna’s total sales this week were 24,761. On the total chart, including all streaming etc, she finished at number 19.
Angelina Jolie, writing under Angelina Jolie Pitt, has published a second piece on the New York Times Op- Ed page about her cancer fears. She has had her ovaries removed, following the revelation a year ago of a double mastectomy. She will not be able to have more children biologically. She and Brad Pitt have three biological children and three whom they adopted.
Angelina writes: Last week, I had the procedure: a laparoscopic bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. There was a small benign tumor on one ovary, but no signs of cancer in any of the tissues.
I have a little clear patch that contains bio-identical estrogen. A progesterone IUD was inserted in my uterus. It will help me maintain a hormonal balance, but more important it will help prevent uterine cancer. I chose to keep my uterus because cancer in that location is not part of my family history.
It is not possible to remove all risk, and the fact is I remain prone to cancer. I will look for natural ways to strengthen my immune system. I feel feminine, and grounded in the choices I am making for myself and my family. I know my children will never have to say, “Mom died of ovarian cancer.”
Angelina’s brave essay does two things– stops rumors and tabloid stories, and helps women all over the world.
James Corden is a Tony winner, but you didn’t hear that last night in his “Late Late Show” introduction. (Maybe CBS doesn’t want people to know?) Anyway, the immensely talented Corden kicked off his reign as host of the show vacated by Craig Ferguson with a classy, funny video. Meryl Streep, Chelsea Handler, and most importantly Jay Leno, helped him in video.
Corden finds a Willy Wonka-like gold ticket that brings him to CBS and Leno, who will teach him how to be a talk show host. It’s a little bit “Whiplash,” which is funny. Leno gets to give NBC a good zetz by appearing on a rival network and endorsing one of their talk shows. He whips Corden into shape, with a little help as well from Meryl Streep, Alison Janney and Shia LaBeouf.
Among the celebs who look in vain for their own gold tickets included Oscar winner (and Corden’s pal) Eddie Redmayne, Chris Rock, Billy Crystal, and — wisely– Chelsea Handler. Handler was strongly tipped to take over for Ferguson, so her participation was a nice inside joke.
For the first show, Corden brought out both of his guests– Tom Hanks and Mila Kunis– out at the same time. They were seated on a small couch to the right, with Corden on the left. An orchestrated “spontaneous” announcement of Kunis’s marriage to Ashton Kutcher came off as a surprise if you were half asleep and a publicist’s plan if you were awake. Kunis’s ring is HUGE.
Two guests at a time? Joe Franklin is smiling from heaven.
Corden’s parents also waved from the audience. They’re from a small town in Great Britain and look about as shocked as Corden that he’s got this show. But they better get used to it. He’s going to be around a long time.
