Jimmy Ruffin has died at age 78. His biggest Motown hit was “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted”– one of the great classics of all time. He was the older brother of David Ruffin of the original Temptations, who died much too young in 1991. Rest in peace. There must be some reunion in heaven, with the Ruffins, Eddie Kendricks, Levi Stubbs, Marvin Gaye, Paul Williams, Melvin Franklin, Florence Ballard, Harvey Fuqua, Cholly Atkins and Mary Wells et al…
I bought a ticket to see Glenn Close, John Lithgow, Bob Balaban, Martha Plimpton and Lindsay Duncan in ” A Delicate Balance.” It cost $225, so I still haven’t gotten over that. My intention was to review the play, which opens tonight on Broadway. But what happened made it impossible. Lax producers, publicist and theater managers allowed a woman– albeit a courageous one– in a motorized wheelchair to sit up front around the fifth row. It was an impossible situation. The woman’s breathing apparatus echoed through the theater, loudly.
It sounded at first like someone was snoring, and it was being broadcast over the PA system. The actors, who did not know what was going on, struggled to be heard over the machine. This is a two and a half hour Edward Albee masterpiece that requires focused attention. And what can you do? Complain? It was like an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” It might have been funny but it was the performance before opening night, many critics and press were there, as well as some well known actors. It was a mess. No one was in charge.
On top of that, a woman’s phone went off in Act 2, and she answered. Plus an adult man across the aisle from me was playing a video game with his iPad during the breaks. What has happened to this world? The guy reminded me of the fellow who makes a bouquet of a shredded TV Guide for Elaine on “Seinfeld.”
Through it all the cast maintained a very delicate balance. The play opens tonight but I will tell you now that you can’t miss these performances– including British actress Clare Higgins. Albee’s play is a masterpiece and this group conveys it very well. There is some shaky direction by Pam McKinnon, but again, it was hard to really judge because of the racket in the theater. (We felt so bad for this woman. It was maybe the worst experience I’ve ever had in the theater.)
Albee’s play about family, friendship, love, and loss is devastating. “Balance” maintains its own balance as a conventional drawing room comedy of manners that becomes an existential jigsaw puzzle. Close and Lithgow have an amazing rapport, as do Balaban and Higgins. Martha Plimpton gives it all heft as the voice of reason. The amazing Lindsay Duncan is there for upheaval, and for playing the accordion. I wish she did more on Broadway.
A trivia note: Close and Duncan each have played the same character from another work– The Marquise de Merteuil. Duncan played it on Broadway in the famous 1988 “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” Then Close played her in the movie version, “Dangerous Liaisons.” Close told me last night after the show that if the Broadway show had been extended, she was set to replace Duncan. “Now we’re playing sisters in the same play,” she observed, with a big grin.
All’s well that ends well– a spontaneous party followed at Bar Centrale, where Close and Balaban dined with producer Bonnie Timmerman and British director Adrian Noble. They had a “Damages” reunion with Rose Byrne, currently on Broadway in “You Can’t Take it With You” and the very funny Stephen Merchant (he’s on HBO this weekend). Matthew Broderick and Stockard Channing came over from the hilarious “It’s Only a Play.” Everyone had deviled eggs and commiserated about a long Wednesday– matinee day.
Someone at the Golden Theater had better get it together for opening night tonight, that’s for sure.
A decade after it was made, a movie called “Aftermath” is being released at the end of this month featuring Chris Penn. The brother of Sean and Michael Penn died in January 2006. He’s not even on the imdb cast list for this film, but he’s being touted in the press release and promo clip. The movie stars a much younger Anthony Michael Hall and a lot of people who are a decade older like Lily Rabe, Tony Danza, and Frank Whaley, who plays a character called Ray Donovan. Freestyle Releasing, exhumation experts, are sending “Aftermath” into the world for one week in New York and then Los Angeles probably before a DVD and cable launch. Chris Penn was a good actor who died much too soon. We’ll see how much he’s really in this movie….
“The River” runs through it– that is, Hugh Jackman has brought so many people to Circle in the Square that he’s extending his run by a month. “The River” now goes until February 8th. Producers put a new block of tickets on sale for $95, which is pretty cool since the theater is small and there are no bad seats. This extension should give Hugh a nudge toward a Tony nomination. His performance is excellent, even if the play is wanting.
He’s not alone. The two women with him in that cabin– Laura Donnelly and Cush Jumbo– are very very good. Cush Jumbo, it seems to me, is headed for even bigger things. She lights up the stage. Something about Hugh Jackman–two years ago, he was so good that Daniel Craig benefited from the rapport in “A Steady Rain.” This time, it’s Cush Jumbo. That means that Hugh is aces, and his strong presence is lifting, ah, all boats.
Anyway, one thing you might ask, if you’re being silly, is why Hugh can’t slice up that meal he makes on stage with his claws. Ouch! It’s a “Wolverine” joke.
Bill Cosby’s name appears at least 25 times in Janice Dickinson’s 2008 memoir called “No Lifeguard on Duty.” He pursues her, helps her, grooms her, invites her to a meeting to see if she can sing– she can’t. He knows it. It’s a ruse. This is a married family man. Her friend says, “He wants to sleep with you.”
In a hotel, he tries to close the deal. He says, “After all I’ve done for you?” In the book, Cosby gets angry when Dickinson backs off. Now in 2014 Dickinson says what followed was rape. She was told by her publisher not to mention it. Cosby’s lawyers threatened her. But what she left in does make sense.
Cosby answered the door in nothing but a white towel. He was fresh from the shower, too; his black skin was glistening. He hugged me, a little too enthusiastically; told me how much he’d missed me, and how nice it was to see me. I believed him. Liquor does that to a girl. “God, you’re beautiful.”
He kissed me, full on the lips, then went off to dress and we went downstairs, to dinner, where Cosby spent the next two hours talking about himself. It was An Evening with Bill Cosby. A Tribute to Bill Cosby. And suddenly I remembered something Andy Warhol once told me. It was his definition of an actor. He said, “An actor is a person whose eyes glaze over when the conversation is no longer about them.” And I thought, Well, then, Bill Cosby is an actor’s actor.
After dinner he asked me back to his room, and I went. But I stopped myself at the door. “I’m exhausted,” I said, begging off. His eyebrows went a little funny. “Exhausted?” he asked, and it was clear he was trying hard to keep his temper in check. “After all I’ve done for you, that’s what I get? I’m exhausted.” “Well, gee, Bill,” I stammered. “If I had known it was going to be like this—” He waved both hands in front of my face, silencing me. Then he gave me the dirtiest, meanest look in the world, stepped into his suite, and slammed the door in my face. Men.
UPDATE FRIDAY MORNING NOV 21st: Overnight “Mockingjay Part 1” earned $17 million– 33% off of last year’s Thursday night opening for “Catching Fire.” Not a good sign. And the teens around me are not clamoring to go tonight, as they did last year.
EARLIER: Are people — I mean, teens– tired of “The Hunger Games”? The new soundtrack to “Mockingjay Part 1” is curated by hot teen singer Lorde. Yet it’s listed atnumber 92 on amazon.com. On iTunes, “Mockingjay” is at number 14, even with the Lorde imprimatur. Hitsdailydouble..com is predicting sales of only 20-25,000 for its debut week. The last “Hunger Games” CD sold 55,000 copies– and that was just a year ago– in its first week.
FYI: The first “Hunger Games” CD sold 180,000 copies in its first week back in March 2012, and entered the charts at number 1.
Meantime, the movie itself is not catching fire with reviewers. On Fandango, “Mockingjay Part 1” rates an average of a 67 among reviewers. This may be a better indication than Rotten Tomatoes, where often negative reviews don’t correlate with “Fresh” or “Rotten” status. The consensus so far is that “Mockingjay” is well made but dull. It’s the first part of a book that most fans of the series agree doesn’t kick in until the end.
Of course no one doubts “Mockingjay Part 1” will have a big first weekend. But after that, it may not be so easy. Meantime, it’s interesting that Lions Gate had a premiere only in L.A., and just a stealth screening in New York at the very down-market AMC theater in Times Square. A good movie gets trumpeted with a Ziegfeld red carpet or something up at AMC Lincoln Square.
If Elaine Stritch had seen the crowd yesterday afternoon at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, she’d have had a whopping good laugh. Her memorial service was just terrific, and the audience wasn’t bad either. Sitting in the seats were Matthew Broderick, F. Murray Abraham, Cynthia Nixon, John Turturro, John Lithgow, David Hyde Pierce, Christine Baranski, Carol Kane, Tommy Tune, Lois Smith, Joy Behar, DA Pennebaker (who filmed Elaine twice–once in the landmark film about “Company” and the for HBO’s “At Liberty” with Chris Hegedus) and HBO’s Sheila Nevins. I may have missed a few people.
On stage: Nathan Lane, the incomparable Liz Smith, Christine Ebersole and Bernadette Peters each sang, Laura Benanti and Michael Feinstein sang, Hal Prince spoke, so did Holland Taylor. Liz revealed that Elaine left her a little money in her will “to take Barbara Walters out to lunch.” Nathan Lane, hilarious as usual, teared up twice and paused in his hysterical remembrances of Stritch. Betty Buckley recalled Elaine critiquing her show at Cafe Carlyle, out loud, while the show was going on. Alec Baldwin and Cherry Jones sent video tapes.
Here’s some video courtesy of Playbill. I knew Elaine Stritch for the last 15 years. She spoke at Elaine Kaufman’s memorial service and reminisced about being a bartender, briefly. She was one of a kind. We’ve lost a lot of people this year. Tough stuff. She will never be forgotten in part due to the documentary “Just Shoot Me” which is eligible for the Oscar this year.I hope it’s nominated.
The 30th anniversary of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” will send proceeds to people suffering from Ebola. Sir Bob Geldof and Midge Ure are back. They even involved Adele’s producer Paul Epworth but they couldn’t get the “Rolling in the Deep” singer to participate. Still, they have Bono, Seal, Sinead O’ Connor, Chris Martin, Angelique Kidjo, One Direction, Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sande, Ellie Goulding and a bunch of UK pop stars. All done in 36 hours and obviously before Bono took his bike spill and Zayn Malik got a stomach virus.
The whole story of Morten Tyldum’s “The Imitation Game,” the Oscar buzzed feature about British mathematician Alan Turing, gets the cover of Time magazine this week. This movie also premiered last night to rapturous applause. Benedict Cumberbatch leads a knock out cast into the Oscar race in a film that so far everyone who’s seen it loves. I mean, loves. I will have more in the AM about the film’s premiere Monday night as well as a lunch earlier in the day at the Four Seasons. Suffice to say, Keira Knightley could run for office and win if she wanted to. “The Imitation Game” has the Best Ensemble of any cast this season. At lunch, Walter Isaacson asked her about being the only woman in a big cast of men. Keira replied: “I’m always the only woman, so it was no different than usual.” Lucky guys.
MORE TUESDAY MORNING: Benedict Cumberbatch gets a HUGE Oscar push when he appears later this week on the cover of TIME Magazine with a rare Enigma Machine. The machine had be to be brought down to Los Angeles last week from the Computer History Museum in Mountainview, California. It has has never left the museum, but former TIME editor in chief Walter Isaacson, whose book “The Innovators” includes Turing, made it happen.
The TIME cover was the talk of last night’s star studded premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater and later at Tavern on the Green, where Cumberbatch introduced his fiancee Sophie Hunter. He told me earlier at the Four Seasons lunch: “I’ve found my own Cumber-bitch and I’m going to marry her!” Ben’s legions of female fans are known as Cumber-bitches, or Cumber-babes, as it were. Erudite and soft spoken, Cumberbatch really is the modern Olivier. He’s a perfect pitch man for “The Imitation Game,” too. He can sell the movie and talk about Turing effortlessly. The Academy loves him, too. He’s definitely a front runner for Best Actor.
The lunch also featured Keira, Matthew Goode– who will be joining “Downton Abbey” as Lady Mary’s latest suitor, Charles Dance, Matthew Beard, director Tyldum, Mark Strong, and Allen Leech– the latter of course is Branson on “Downtown Abbey.” Leech has dropped quite a few pounds since I saw him in Toronto in September. He looks about ten years younger. “I had to do it!” he told me. “You should see what they feed us!” We talked about “Downton Abbey” going on to its 6th season. I said it will probably go to a 7th or 8th. “How will we do it?” Leech wondered. “I’d have to age. Maggie Smith keeps joking her character must be 179 years old by now!” He imitated Dame Maggie perfectly.
I ran into another soap opera star at Tavern on the Green– Susan Lucci, with husband Helmut Huber. Susan is a doll, always fun. She climbed out of the Prospect Park debacle of “All My Children” and has two TV shows– “Devious Maids” and her show on the ID channel about criminal re-enactments. She’s a survivor! Also at the party: Bette Midler’s Yale trained actress daughter Sophie von Hasselburg, who’s just finishing a run off Broadway. What a great young lady— really poised, full of personality, very attractive, and head on straight about fame. She’s a star in the making!
The Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt produced “Selma” received two thunderous standing ovations tonight at its first New York screening. Ava DuVernay’s extraordinary film about Martin Luther King’s history making civil rights March leaps right into the top tier of this year’s Oscar race. David Oyelowo gives the performance of a lifetime as King, defining him on film finally after all these years. Watching “Selma” you really feel like all the plays, movies Tv shows, songs– every theater piece about King– all of it culminates in this film.
I am not kidding when I say they were standing ovations, either. There’s a lump in your throat at the of “Selma,” a movie that wisely takes a a snapshot of King’s life from the moment he wins the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 through the Selma march in 1965. It’s during this time that he successful forces Lyndon Johnson to create and pass the Voters Rights Act. Tom Wilkinson is effortlessly good as a cantankerous LBJ who realizes his legacy could be destroyed by racist Alabama governor George Wallace (a perfectly slimy Tim Roth).
There’s really wonderful supporting work from Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, Alessandro Nivola as John Doar (who just passed away in real life), both Lorraine Toussaint and Oprah Winfrey, and extended cameos from Martin Sheen and Cuba Gooding Jr.
Cinematographer Bradford Young (who also has “Pawn Sacrifice” and “A Most Violent Year”) gives “Selma” a convincing feel in muted colors that blossom toward the end of the movie. The version we saw last night also featured the theme song, written and recorded by Jay Z and John Legend. It’s a winner.
I met Ava Duvernay about ten years ago. She was Jennifer Hudson’s publicist. But she wanted to be a director. She made a great little indie film called “Middle of Nowhere.” She picked up “Selma” after Lee Daniels post-“The Butler” decided not do it. She’d better thank him in her speeches. Quite an accomplishment. And the movie got the seal of approval from Richard Valeriani, former NBC correspondent, who covered the Selma march. He told me she got it right.
On a related subject, listen to this: