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Elaine Stritch Dead at 89; She Told Friends She “Was Ready to Go” But No One Believed It

Roger Friedman
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Elaine Stritch Dead at 89; She Told Friends She “Was Ready to Go” But No One Believed It

The great, and I do mean GREAT, Elaine Stritch, has passed away in Detroit at age 89. A couple of weeks ago her most recent documentarian told our Paula Schwartz that Elaine had said she “was ready to go.” Of course no one believed it. But a few months ago, when Elaine made her last trip to New York for a screening of the movie at the Paley Center, she stood and said goodbye to everyone from a wheelchair at the top of the steeply inclined theater. She was still quipping, and still carrying on, but she did look tired, and maybe knew something was up that we didn’t. Elaine was one of the all time greats, and it will be hard to imagine New York and theater and show biz and life without her.

There are so many great stories and so many people will tell them. Liz Smith — check her out at nysocialdiary.com– knew her best and promoted the hell out of Stritch. DA Pennebaker captured her on film for the making of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” score, and she became an overnight sensation at around 50! A few years ago, Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus won an Emmy for their HBO film about Stritch’s magnificent one woman show, “At Liberty.”

At Elaine Kaufman’s memorial in 2011, Stritch told how the other Elaine took pity on her when she was new and struggling and gave her a job as a bartender. The gig lasted one night. Stritch, a self confessed functioning alcoholic, served one guy 37 drinks until he keeled over. That was the end of that career!

Stritch was married once, for a long time, loved guys but had no children. Her survivors are everyone she knew, her massive crowds of friends and admirers and fans, not to mention her nieces and nephews and cousins in Detroit who loved her. Her memorial service will have to be held in Madison Square Garden because no Broadway house could hold everyone.

Elaine, please, don’t curse at God when you get to heaven today. But I’m sure at tonight’s premiere for Woody Allen’s “Magic in the Moonlight,” there will be a cheer and a prayer. And all the lights on Broadway will be dimmed.

 

Garth Brooks World Tour with Trisha Yearwood Has Surprisingly Low Ticket Price

Roger Friedman
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Garth Brooks World Tour with Trisha Yearwood Has Surprisingly Low Ticket Price

Garth Brooks will start his world tour on September 4th in Chicago. His special guest is wife Trisha Yearwood. It’s the first time Brooks has played Chicago in 17 years. So you’d think the ticket price would be pretty high, at least $150.

But guess what? Tickets are just $56 plus tax and fees, coming to $65.50. What? His website says all the tickets will cost that little, making the show completely affordable. There’s a limit to the number you can buy (6). Garth will make his money on merchandise (which everyone will want) and volume– a really sold out auditorium without scalpers taking a cut.

The rest of the world tour dates will be released soon on his website. Album comes on the second Tuesday of November. Downloads are imminent.

Robin Thicke Sells 7K CDs in 2nd Week, as Total Sales Fall to Scary Lows

Roger Friedman
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Robin Thicke Sells 7K CDs in 2nd Week, as Total Sales Fall to Scary Lows

No one wants Robin Thicke’s album “Paula.” And very few people want any other CDs out there either physically or digitally.

In his second week, Thicke sold just 7,205 copies of “Paula,” bringing his total to maybe 30,000. The whole thing is a bust, a wash, it’s a goner, worse even than JLO and Mariah Carey’s new releases.

But the whole chart is a disaster. The number one album, by singer songwriter Sia, sold only 52,000 copies. That’s a new scary low for a debut number 1.  The whole top 10 sold only about 300,000 copies. The whole top 10!

If this were the auto business, people would be jumping out of buildings. There is absolutely no way record companies as they exist now can survive on those sales figures. It’s not like they’re selling something else besides music. Are they?

I did tell you that all CD and digital sales were down for the first half of 2014. Only streaming is up. But it’s not up that much. Where are the releases? Why is there no exciting music, no songs of the summer of 2014? The situation is quite sad. The record companies have encouraged so much sampling, and cannibalizing, that original music has all but been stamped out.

And back to Mariah and JLO. We’re not done with those stories. Those albums should have generated hits. Mariah had them on the CD. What happened? The other album that didn’t produce was Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP. We’re still counting on Gaga’s jazz duets with Tony Bennett to light a fire under sales this fall.

 

“Rocky” In Broadway Knockout, Latest Show of this Season to Close

Roger Friedman
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“Rocky” In Broadway Knockout, Latest Show of this Season to Close

“Rocky” has been knocked out on Broadway. Despite a stellar set, and actors like Andy Karl who were terrific, the musical version of the Sylvester Stallone classic film never caught on. With bad reviews and no Tony awards, “Rocky” was not long for this world. Yo Adrienne, the show will close on August 17th.

The news comes as the Tupac Shakur musical “Holler If You Hear Me” has announced it’s also closing shop a month after it opened. Already closed from the 2013-14 season: “Mother and Sons” and  “The Bridges of Madison County,” as well as short runs like “Act One, ” “All the Way” and “A Raisin in the Sun.” “The Cripple of Inaashman” and “Of Mice and Men” are next. “If/Then” with Idina Menzel, which started strong, is now on discount.

Wait: “Violet” is on its last legs, and “The Velocity of Autumn” came and went in a minute. I hope the “Realistic Joneses” is gone. Yikes.

What a season! Last year we had Matilda, Pippin, Kinky Boots and Motown. They’re still playing. This year we are left with Beautiful, Les Miz, and Hedwig. I’m avoiding the obvious about Bullets Over Broadway.

Were the shows that bad? No, not really. But ticket prices are high. And the theater district aka Times Square is a mess. The pedestrian mall has turned into a nightmare. Jack hammer that thing up, put back the streets. The mall is filthy and scary. The Great White Way needs an angioplasty– and fast!

Luckily, a great fall season is just around the corner, with “The Last Ship” among the many highlights.

 

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Misguided Pleas to Rock Stars Are Ignored

Roger Friedman
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Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Misguided Pleas to Rock Stars Are Ignored

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters won’t shut up. He keeps making public pleas to other rock stars to stay away from Israel. He incorrectly and misguidedly calls Israel “an apartheid state,” a comment that isn’t going to win him any fans in his adopted home of New York City. I’m disappointed in Waters and starting to think he should stay on the Dark Side of the Moon until he can control himself.

This week, Waters has posted an open letter to Neil Young, begging him not to play any shows in Israel. Young had to cancel a date there this week due to security concerns, which alerted Waters to the existence of the show. More recently, Waters also lobbied the Rolling Stones to cancel their show in Tel Aviv. They wisely ignored him.

Almost all the musicians Waters has pestered on this subject have declined to respond because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Young people, rock fans, take him seriously because they like Pink Floyd’s music. But now I’m starting to think that Waters’ songs like “Us and Them,” “Money,” and “Brain Damage” may have other meanings.

Even if he’s not anti-Semitic, Waters doesn’t realize he’s engendering anti-Semitism. All you have to do is look at headlines from Europe, and the rising number of situations in the US, to realize that Waters is making an egregious error here. If he keeps it up, he may find that Pink Floyd’s fall marketing campaign will meet with less enthusiasm than hoped. All in all, it’s another brick through the window, and we don’t need that..

 

Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner in Sid Caesar Tribute Live Stream on Wednesday

Roger Friedman
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Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner in Sid Caesar Tribute Live Stream on Wednesday

I don’t want to put any pressure on them, but tomorrow night (Wednesday July 16th) Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner are going to make classic “TV” again. The long time friends will salute their late boss Sid Caesar at the Paley Center in Los Angeles. The show is free to the audience there, and will be live streamed on www.PaleyCenter.org/Live starting at 10:10pm Eastern time. There are supposed to be other guests (David Steinberg?) as well a moderator (Eddy Friedfeld). Carl is 90, Mel is 87, they are younger and funnier than any other comics in the world. I would guess they will revive the 2,000 Year Old Man, in which case this may be a historic event. I hope the Paley Center has added servers! If only we really had “Star Trek” transporters, I’d be there. People are probably lining up now.

Michael Moore Needs Help Next Month From Movie Theater Owners

Roger Friedman
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Michael Moore Needs Help Next Month From Movie Theater Owners

Oscar winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore needs help next month for his Traverse City Film Festival. He just posted this on Facebook:

“This is a note to fellow cinephiles and movie lovers who live outside the U.S.:

“Each summer I put on a film festival in my home state of Michigan. This summer is its 10th anniversary. To celebrate I thought I would invite the rest of the world to join us. So, on one day of the festival (August 1), people in 7 theaters — one each on all 7 continents — will join us in Traverse City, Michigan watching the same film we’re watching at that same exact moment. And when the film is over, all 7 audiences will be beamed up onto all 7 screens where we can see each other and have a live discussion and a live Q & A with the filmmakers.

“I’ve got the film picked out — it’s one of the best documentaries I’ve seen this year, entitled “1971” — but I don’t have all the cinemas. So this is where you come in. Do you run or work at a movie theater that you think might like to be part of this grand experiment? I need one for each continent. Can you help me out? My goal is that by sometime tomorrow I’ll have all the cinemas I’ll need for to pull it off. (This request is also an experiment — to see if social media can immediately make something like this happen! I think it can and will.)

“Contact your local cinema — you know the one, the one that shows mostly the cool, smart films. All they have to have is the ability to project digitally and have a good internet connection in the theater.

“What do you think? Can I show this movie to you and your friends on August 1 in your town? Let me know! Just post your message to me here and I’ll check it out.

“Btw, you’ll love this movie. It’s about a group of people breaking into an FBI office and stealing the records that exposed the government’s secret domestic spying program — over 40 years ago. Some things never change. But the cool thing about this group of protesters is that not a single one of them were ever caught. They reveal themselves for the first time in this movie.

Thanks for helping me — and I hope to see you from the Traverse City Film Festival on August 1st.

Golden Globes Group “Settles” Lawsuits, Still Has Questions to Answer about Money

Roger Friedman
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Golden Globes Group “Settles” Lawsuits, Still Has Questions to Answer about Money

The Hollywood Foreign Press has settled– er, surrendered– to NBC and Dick Clark Productions. The Golden Globes will continue to be produced by the network and DCP after a judge ruled in favor of them. The HFPA appealed, and were about to lose everything. The HFPA also spent in excess of $12 million in legal fees, lots more, on a losing proposition.

This is on the eve of the annual HFPA lunch where they donate a million bucks or so to various charities, announce their officers– usually the same ones as last year– and try to put a good face on their various scandals.

However: since January I’ve been waiting for an explanation of where $1.5 million went in the summer of 2012. The HFPA parked the money in a charitable trust that is no longer registered with the government as a 501 c 3. They may have done the same thing in the summer of 2013, but that tax filing isn’t available yet. I broke this story in January and asked for an explanation.

Meantime the folks at GuideStar, which monitors charities and foundations, is looking into it.  Giving money to charity is the way the HFPA maintains its primary 501 c 3, and gets away with paying no taxes on the $7 million plus it receives from NBC.

More: now comes another interesting part since the HFPA officers are all supposedly receiving big raises this summer. President Theo Kingma, a photographer, I’m told will get bumped up to $100,000. Kingma is a nice guy, but really, this whole thing is insane. Critics groups around the country arrive at the same nominations as the Globes without any pay whatsoever. And those groups are composed of professional critics with real credentials, unlike a lot of the goofy HFPA.

 

Rocker Neil Young Cancels Israeli Performance Due to “Security Concerns”

Roger Friedman
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Rocker Neil Young Cancels Israeli Performance Due to “Security Concerns”

Neil Young and Crazy Horse have cancelled their July 17th performance in Tel Aviv at Hayarkon Park.

A press release from Young’s camp said: “It is with heavy hearts and deep sadness that we must cancel our one and only Israeli concert due to tensions which have rendered the event unsafe at this time. We’ll miss the opportunity to play for our fans and look forward to playing in Israel and Palestine in peace.”

Young continued: “I will be making donations to both the Louise Tillie Alpert Youth Music Centre of Israel, and Heartbeat, two organizations that teach music to Palestinian and Israeli youth simultaneously by enabling them to play music together.”

Meantime, we’re all waiting for Neil’s Pono music player, due this fall after a major Kickstarter campaign.

Box Office: “Dawn of Planet of Apes” Scores $73Mil, But Box Office is Down 25%

Roger Friedman
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Box Office: “Dawn of Planet of Apes” Scores $73Mil, But Box Office is Down 25%

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” made $73 million this weekend. So you’d think the box office was booming But this past weekend was down 25% from last year at this time, and overall the box office is off 45% from last year. “Apes” was the last best hope to save the summer of 2014 as we head into specialty films like Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” and Woody Allen’s “Magic in the Moonlight.”

But my favorite news is that John Carney’s “Begin Again” is a box office winner. The charming music-oriented romantic comedy led the indie films this week with almost $3 million added to its box office. The total now is $5.3  million.

The Weinstein Company is now using Maroon 5’s “Maps” as the background music in the TV commercial. But the real Adam Levine hit of the summer is the song the Maroon 5 singer performs in “Begin Again” called “Lost Stars.” Call your local radio station and insist on them playing “Lost Stars” ASAP.

And “Boyhood” took in almost $400,000 at 5 locations. Have you seen it yet? As soon as the World Cup is over, get up and go!

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