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Oprah Winfrey Campaigning for Virginia Candidate A Judge Once Said Acted with “Evil Motive and Actual Malice” Toward Defrauded Nursing Home Workers

Roger Friedman
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Oprah Winfrey Campaigning for Virginia Candidate A Judge Once Said Acted with “Evil Motive and Actual Malice” Toward Defrauded Nursing Home Workers

EXCLUSIVE Here’s a story about politics and strange bedfellows. Oprah Winfrey is actively campaigning for 8th district possible Virginia congressional candidate Lavern Chatman despite the woman’s controversial background.

Chatman  is one of 11 candidates in a June 10 primary in Arlington, Virginia to become the Democratic congressional candidate.

But get this: she really lives in North Carolina, where her second husband, Robert Brown, is a major black Republican, former aide to Richard Nixon, consistent donor to the Republican party, and close associate of scandal-plagued right wing North Carolina Republican governor Pat McCrory.

(Chatman’s rep says she has lived in Alexandria, Virginia since 1993.)

Also: Chatman herself is at the center of a scandal concerning a 2001 finding by a civil court judge that she helped  defraud nursing home workers of $1.4 million. The decision was subsequently upheld.

Chatman’s defense now is that she was grieving her first wealthy husband and didn’t know what was going on.

In upholding the judgement against her, the appeals judges wrote of Chatman, the woman Oprah is hoping makes it to Congress:

“The court also found appellant and [Chatman’s co-defendant] Littlejohn jointly and severally liable for $1.4 million in punitive damages, ruling that there was “clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Littlejohn and Ms. Chatman acted with evil motive, actual malice and with willful disregard for the rights of the plaintiffs.” The court characterized their behavior as “outrageous and grossly fraudulent,” especially considering the disparity in wealth between appellant and Littlejohn and the “people whom they scammed.”

(I added the boldface.) You can read the whole saga of Chatman’s skullduggery here. http://statecasefiles.justia.com/documents/district-of-columbia/court-of-appeals/01-cv-861-5.pdf?ts=1323894159

In April, Oprah and boyfriend Stedman Graham attended a Chatman fundraiser. Oprah said: “Stedman and I came here tonight to support Lavern Chatman,” Winfrey said, according to a press release from Chatman’s campaign. “I’ve seen how Lavern embraced with her whole heart being a host mom to one of my girls, who recently graduated from the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa. Lavern makes people feel like they matter, and I see that Lavern is happiest when she is serving others.”

This was after Oprah was apprised of Chatman’s past.

Chatman has been married twice. She’s the widow (and the third  wife) of  James Icelius Chatman. He was much older, and also a rarity: a former Colonel who started a military company called Technology Applications. Chatman sold the company to DynCorp and served on its board for years. DynCorp is literally at the center of the military-industrial complex, with HQ near the CIA and the Pentagon. According to Wikipedia. at one point DynCorp provided bodyguards to such luminaries as Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide in the 1990s and to Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the 2000s.

After Chatman died, Lavern married North Carolina PR man Robert Brown, a black Republican who served as a special adviser to Richard Nixon from 1968-73. Nixon  actually hosted a dinner honoring him. Brown is a player in southern Republican politics. Federal records show he donated money to both George W. Bush’s and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns.

Brown has given many donations to Republican party and candidates in NC. He served as an adviser in the transition when McCrory became governor. As a PR consultant, Brown is very heavy in big pharma, gas and oil. He’s served on the boards of Duke Energy and Sonoco, and has represented Merck and Novartis. (Coincidentally, McCrory worked for Duke Energy for 27 years before he became governor. Duke Energy donated $1 million to his gubernatorial campaign.)

Very carefully, Chatman sticks to her first husband’s name and little is being said in her congressional race about Brown or her life with him. When the Washington Post reported the story of Oprah attending Chatman’s fundraiser, they didn’t even mention Brown, or the fact that the couple lives in North Carolina.

Brown even gave money to Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.

I can’t imagine what Brown and Winfrey talk about when they’re together. These are Oprah’s not only BFFs, she’s actively supporting the wife getting into Congress. Oprah. Winfrey.

 

Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” Adds Alessandro Nivola as Civil Rights Activist John Doar

Roger Friedman
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Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” Adds Alessandro Nivola as Civil Rights Activist John Doar

EXCLUSIVE “American Hustle” DA Alessandro Nivola is hotter than ever this year. I just told he signed to star in Joe Berlinger’s “Facing the Wind.” Now I can tell you exclusively Nivola has signed on to play Civil Rights activist John Doar in Ava Duvernay’s “Selma” from Brad Pitt and DeeDee Gardner’s Plan B.

Doar– 92 years old and going strong still as a New York attorney– was a key civil rights activist in the 1960s. Nivola will be playing him as a young man. But just five years later, Doar– in the 1970s–helped prepare the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Just FYI.

Nivola Joins David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King and Tom Wilkinson as LBJ. Nivola has had a busy year so far, winning a SAG Award for best cast for “American Hustle”, being nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for his performance on Broadway in Terrence Rattigan’s “The Winslow Boy”, co-starring with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in JC Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year”, and producing the comedy series “Doll & Em” for HBO under his King Bee Productions banner. That show, as you know, co-starred his talented wife Emily Mortimer.

Whew! Is that enough? No. Nivola is in Atom Egoyan’s current “Devil’s Knot.” And this fall he returns to Broadway to star opposite Bradley Cooper in a revival of “The Elephant Man”. Nivola, Cooper and Patricia Clarkson will be on hand to present together at the Tony Awards on Sunday.

Allman Brothers Band Will Play Final Shows in New York this October

Roger Friedman
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Allman Brothers Band Will Play Final Shows in New York this October

It’s just about time to say goodbye to the Allman Brothers Band. The group, together in this form for 14 years, will play their final shows this October at the Beacon Theater in New York. Some of the dates are rescheduled from this past March, when Gregg Allman fell ill. But two more– October 27 and 28– have been added as an actual farewell.

Two of the main players in the group–Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks– announced a while ago, they were leaving the band. There was speculation that was it, but now it seems reality has set in. The Allman Brothers are over.

The real Allman Brothers were over a long time ago, of course. The original band was Gregg Allman and his brother Duane, a legend. But Duane died in 1971, and bass player Berry Oakley died in 1972– each in motorcycle accidents in the same spot in Macon, Georgia.

The current line up includes original members Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks, and Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson.

This has already been a bizarre and kind of terrible year for Gregg Allman. During the pre-production of a movie that was going to be made about him, a production assistant was killed on the set. The movie never began production, Allman sued to stop it altogether, and the producers are suing him.

Anyway, I love the Allman Brothers. Who doesn’t? It’s sad to see them go, but it’s been an extraordinary run. Someday someone will make a movie about them properly.

Here’s Jessica:

 

Michael Jackson Stinc: Pop Star Was Terrible at Business, Always in Debt

Roger Friedman
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Michael Jackson Stinc: Pop Star Was Terrible at Business, Always in Debt

“Michael Jackson Inc” by Zach O’Malley Greenburg hits stores tomorrow. It’s a clip job, with 25 pages of single spaced footnotes. Greenburg, a Forbes writer, knows how to search the internet to patch together Michael Jackson’s history, albeit severely condensed.

Michael Jackson was a very bad business man, with little to no connection to the real world. He was duplicitous and disloyal. After “Thriller” sold 22 million copies, Jackson decided to live on that level forever. The only thing that saved him was buying the Beatles catalog, merging it with Sony Music Publishing, and leveraging the whole thing in loans from 1995 until his death in 2009.

Greenburg has taken the opposite tact. He thinks Michael was a great businessman. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and he can’t build a case for it. Every step of the Jackson story is about him frittering away money, ignoring good advice, hiring goons, creeps and con men, investing in nonsense.

I’ve written extensively on this subject. Believe me, I know. Read the bodyguards’ book that just came out, called “Remember the Time.” Their anecdotes dovetail what I was writing in real time back then. And I never knew those guys.

Greenburg’s book depends on who would talk to him. Those who didn’t are omitted. So there is no mention of how financiers Al Malnik and Charles Koppelman tried to save Michael in 2001-2004, how the Nation of Islam forced them out, and so on. There is no knowledge of how that whole period of time worked and who the players were including Brett Ratner and Chris Tucker.

Greenburg has no idea of Jackson’s history with AEGLive because he listened to “Doctor” Tohme Tohme and Colony Capital’s Thomas Barrack, who spoon fed him their version. It’s all wrong in “Michael Jackson Inc.”

Oh, what could have been: just tracing the story through Jackson’s many managers and lawyers from 1989 on would have shown what a manipulator the singer was, and how business acumen was not the strong suit of a man who bought hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of trinkets in Las Vegas gift shops.

The bodyguards’ book actually does tell the story of how all these pieces came together, resulting ultimately in Michael’s death. Greenburg is clueless. He doesn’t seem to know that Jackson, after his child molestation trial, allowed Neverland and his parents’ home to go into foreclosure. All employees at both places and all their families suffered at the hands of this business “genius.”

Here’s what was really happening in 2006- 2007. Buy a clue, here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/08/11/michael-jackson-in-foreclosure-again/

and here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/03/10/janet-jackson-will-bail-out-michael-again/

The last couple of chapters are an ode to the Jackson executors. They may even have written this stuff and sent it over. This isn’t journalism. But it may be why Forbes has been sold to the Chinese.

Rock Hall of Shame Edits Beatles, Stones’ Manager Induction Speech to Shreds

Roger Friedman
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Rock Hall of Shame Edits Beatles, Stones’ Manager Induction Speech to Shreds

Peter Asher has not complained to me. I haven’t even talked to him about this. But the Rock and Roll Hall of Shame edited his induction speech of Brian Epstein and Andrew Loog Oldham to shreds on Saturday night’s HBO broadcast. Asher started Apple Records, discovered James Taylor, produced his albums and Linda Ronstadt’s as well as managed them, was one half of a 60s super duo (Peter & Gordon)…Need I go on? It’s utter disrespect to him, to Epstein’s memory, and to Oldham.

By the numbers…

Time dedicated at the ceremony to the Brian Epstein & Andrew Oldham induction:  10 minutes. (7 minutes speech & 3 minutes video clips)
Time dedicated on the HBO special to the entire Brian Epstein & Andrew Oldham induction: 1 minute 39 seconds.
Number of words in Peter Asher’s original speech for both inductees:  922 words
Number of words in Peter Asher’s speech as edited for HBO:  237 words
Time spent specifically referring to Brian Epstein: 30 seconds
Number of words specifically about Brian Epstein: 76 words
Time spent specifically referring to Andrew Oldham: 33 seconds
Number of words specifically about Andrew Oldham: 81 words
You can click on the jpeg below to see what they cut in red. No one should pay any attention to these people anymore. And Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band should feel used. They were the main entertainment for the night, for free. The Hall of Shame will make a bundle off of them.
Asher cut-down (2)

Angelina Jolie Rules at the Box Office with a Socko “Maleficent”

Roger Friedman
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Angelina Jolie Rules at the Box Office with a Socko “Maleficent”

Last year it was Brad Pitt’s turn to conquer the big release box office with “World War Z.” This year, it’s Angelina Jolie’s chance. Disney’s heavily promoted “Maleficent” had a socko Friday night with $24.2 million. This should mean a whopping $70 mil weekend. For Angie, it’s a good year. In the late fall we’ll have “Unbroken,” which she directed, and should be a big Oscar contender. Who says you can’t have it all?

Rock Hall of Shame Dishonors Beatles, Stones Managers on Tonight’s Show

Roger Friedman
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Rock Hall of Shame Dishonors Beatles, Stones Managers on Tonight’s Show

When the taping of last month’s annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert is shown tonight on HBO, the Hall will make yet another grievous error. If we’re lucky we’ll see two seconds of Peter Asher’s seven minute speech inducting the original managers of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones– the late Brian Epstein and the very much alive Andrew Loog Oldham.

It only took 29 years to get acknowledgments for these two seminal rock and roll figures at the Hall of Shame. Oldham was so horrified by the whole event that he didn’t even bother attending. Epstein’s family was given short shrift. Oldham said in an interview: “I think those people basically hijacked the name ‘rock ‘n’ roll,  I won’t be there.   It’s now just a television show. ”

Asher, who at least knew Epstein and is friends with Oldham, was chosen to induct the pair. In the past, such inductees would have separate speeches and a lot of fanfare. But Hall poobah Jann Wenner found this all so uninteresting that he and Rock Hall prez Joel Peresman ($400K a year salary) simply combined the two inductions into one quickly forgotten moment. Asher was hurried off the stage of the Barclays Center. Watch tonight and see if you can find him.

Of course, this is in contrast to, say, Wenner’s own induction a few years ago. That consisted of at least 10 minutes of toasts, followed by Wenner’s 12 minute speech. The legendary rock bands that he created and managed? Uh, hmmm. None.

Of the nearly five hour show at the Barclays, just under 7 minutes was devoted to the Epstein-Oldham induction. Here’s the audio of Peter Asher:

And here’s a new written tribute to Brian Epstein by producer/humorist/Beatles scholar Martin Lewis – who instigated and ran the 15-year campaign to get Epstein honored by the Hall of Fame:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-lewis/no-brian-epstein-no-beatl_1_b_5155998.html

 

UPDATE: “True Detective” Producer/Director Making “Black Kid” for HBO

Roger Friedman
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UPDATE: “True Detective” Producer/Director Making “Black Kid” for HBO

UPDATE 8/12: EXCLUSIVE Cary Fukunaga, director and producer of “True Detective” on HBO, has a new credit. Sources tell me he’s exec producing a new film called “Black Kid.” The director is Rob Meyer, and screenplay is by Annie J. Howell. An offer is said to be out now to a name black actor to play the title character’s father– the title character is a mixed race 12 year old who moves from the city to Idaho with his parents.

I’m told the film will shoot in New York state, however, substituting for the potato center of the world. And while the central theme is about a biracial pre-teen, as far as I can tell everyone working on the film is white. But that’s the magic of filmmaking.

There are a few producers, most notably Jared Ian Goldman, who worked on two films I really liked: “The Wackness” and “Solitary Man.”

Hillary Clinton’s Hardest Choice: To Give New Ghostwriter Credit

Roger Friedman
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Hillary Clinton’s Hardest Choice: To Give New Ghostwriter Credit

The world waits for Hillary Clinton’s new book, “Hard Choices,” on June 10th. I know I have it all queued up on amazon.com. But Clinton’s hardest choice may start at home: will she give her ghost writer a credit this time?

I wrote about a year ago that Edward “Ted” Widmer, a long time Hillary associate, was actually writing “Hard Choices.”

Widmer, 51, is a Harvard graduate who wrote for the Harvard Lampoon. He has a long association with Brown University, where he was the Director of the John Carter Brown Library.At least that’s where used to be. Widmer now works out of the president’s office at Brown. After all, his prestige factor has rise considerably.

Between 2001 and 2006, Widmer was inaugural director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington widmerCollege, where, according to his bio, “he created numerous programs designed to enliven the teaching of American history and politics to diverse groups, ranging from Muslim college students in historically anti-American regions of the world to elementary students in under-financed public school districts of the eastern shore of Maryland.”

Last year I wrote that Widmer has conceded that Clinton–though she hasn’t said so directly– is “incredibly organized and planning her campaign.” He sent me an email later claiming: “I have neither said that or anything like it to anyone, nor is it something I believe.” Well, it’s a year later and Hillary is pretty much the front runner for the Democratic nomination.

But what credit will Widmer get on “Hard Choices”? Clinton caused an uproar with her bestseller, “It Take a Village,” when she denied the ghost writer any identification at all. That book was written by Barbara Feinman, a Georgetown University professor. Feinman was paid $120,000 for seven months’ work. She eventually went public and complained about lack of credit.

So how did it work out? Widmer emailed me this afternoon: “…sorry, I don’t have the answer — I haven’t seen printed version…”

 

 

 

Exclusive: Bodyguards Detail Michael Jackson’s Last 2 Years of Dwindling Finances, “Homelessness,” and Mysterious Lady Friends

Roger Friedman
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Exclusive: Bodyguards Detail Michael Jackson’s Last 2 Years of Dwindling Finances, “Homelessness,” and Mysterious Lady Friends

In the last two years of his life, Michael Jackson entertained at least two mysterious lady friends. According to his bodyguards in their chock-full-of-stories book “Remember the Time,” the women simply showed up and Jackson knew them. Their code names were “Friend” and “Flower.”

The former was “drop dead gorgeous.” Jackson would meet her at a Hamptons Inn in Chantilly, Virginia in the summer of 2007 when he and his family were staying on the East Coast.  Was she a hooker? Did Jackson pay her? The guards don’t know. The girl named “Flower” stayed at a place called– I love this– the Red Fox Inn in Middleburg, Virginia. (You can almost hear Redd Foxx shouting “Here comes the big one!”)

Was there, uh, sex involved? With “Friend” in the car, one of the bodyguards drove them to see the Washington Monument at night. “All we heard was smackin’ lips behind the curtain,” Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard write. Cops in tactical uniforms eventually stopped them and ran the car’s plates. It was registered to Michael Jackson. No ticket. But they got autographs.

Two new Michael Jackson books hit stores next week. Only one of them is of much interest. “Remember the Time” is written by the two main bodyguards who were with Jackson from the time he returned from Bahrain in December 2006 until his death on June 25th, 2009. The book should be called “Adventures in Babysitting.” Whitfield and Beard have so many good stories that you can’t put the book down.

Even if half of them are true, the book is a page turning “Thriller.”

Unlike the other book, “Michael Jackson Inc..” which is largely a clip job with a lot of omissions and errors, “Remember the Time” is about as close and personal a collection of original observations that you can get about Jackson during that period. The two guards were with him in Las Vegas, on his circuitous trip to Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey, back to Vegas, and finally, Los Angeles for the preparation of the “This is It” tour.

All the traveling was because Jackson would not return to Neverland after the 2005 trial ended. “It’s contaminated by evil,” he told his kids.

Not only that, Whitfield and Beard (Whitfield especially) was there was for the arrival of “Doctor” Tohme, all the shenanigans of publicist- turned manager Raymone Bain, and even the recording of the famed Cascio tracks that turned up on the “Michael” album.

There’s a lot of great stuff. Michael, they say, was obsessed with Bobby Brown’s song “My Prerogative.” He wanted to cover it.

A lot of “Remember the Time” has to do with money. Jackson was running out of it, like gas leaking out of a car. The ironic part is that he always had cash stashed away even as his credit cards were being turned down on romps through malls and toy stores. For weeks on end, the men say, they weren’t paid, but held on out of loyalty.

The saga of their own paychecks not coming through dovetails with stories I was breaking at the time about Jackson allowing his parents’ mortgage to fall into the hands of strangers, of employees at Neverland not being paid, and so on.

A few things of interest to kick us off:

Jackson’s credit was so bad that AT&T asked for a $5,000 deposit when he tried to get a cell phone.

Despite refusing to see his family– and their many efforts to see him– Jackson still had father Joe Jackson on his mind. Whenever anyone wronged him, Michael would say: “I should have my father kick their asses,” he’d say repeatedly.

Jackson was insulated from bad press. The only paper he read every day was The Wall Street Journal because it was the only place he wouldn’t run into Michael Jackson stories. Manager Raymone Bain kept bad stories away from him, and Jackson himself didn’t go on the internet.

Jackson was surprised to learn after some time that Raymone Bain wasn’t running a big management office for him. Her HQ was her home in Washington DC.

During this period, Jackson relied heavily on L.A. attorney Peter Lopez (who committed suicide in 2010, a year after Jackson died). He would call Lopez and ask him, “Peter I don’t know where my money is. Or how much money I have. Can you help me?”

The other lawyer during this time was Greg Cross, of the venerable DC firm Venable LLC. Bain and Venable were constantly squabbling within earshot of the bodyguards about Jackson’s perilous finances.

The guards discovered that Jackson had been hoarding Tabasco sauce in his rented Las Vegas home. “A shitload of it,” they write. The entire pantry in the kitchen was wall to wall with it.

Michael carried a silver briefcase with him wherever he went containing two Oscars from “Gone with the Wind.” He’d paid $1.5 million for them in 1999. They were his “hard asset” in case his back was really against the wall.

They frequently took Michael and his kids out on expeditions. Jackson would be veiled or in costume. One time they passed him off as Prince, the singer. At a Chuck E. Cheese, wily daughter Paris responded “As if” when a parent asked her if her veiled father was Michael Jackson.

In Virginia, the bodyguards say they “lived” at Burlington Coat Factory, buying clothes for themselves and the kids because the summer 2007 trip had gone on longer than anyone imagined.

Michael was constantly asking the bodyguards to inquire about buying crap he saw in stores or malls. He had them plunk down $1,000 for a life size set of “Simpsons” characters he saw in a movie theater lobby.

More to come…

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