BY PAULA SCHWARTZ, SPECIAL TO SHOWBIZ411– Ryan Gosling slipped into the second row of the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center Saturday night to catch Shannon Plumb’s “Towheads,” which was screened as part of the New Directors/New Films festival. Plumb is married to Derek Cianfrance, who directed “The Place Beyond the Pines,” starring Gosling and Bradley Cooper, and which opened Friday. (Box office is impressive; it’s raked in $270,000 in four theaters.) Cianfrance also directed Gosling in “Blue Valentine.”

Probably few people even spotted the Oscar-nominated actor, who was with friends. There was no sight of girlfriend Eva Mendes. After the movie, Gosling raised his hand and asked a question in the Q&A.

Cianfrance’s “The Place Beyond the Pines” focuses on fatherhood, responsibility and legacy. “Towheads” is the other side of the coin. Plumb, a video and performance artist, wrote, directed and starred in an impressive and enjoyable film that celebrates motherhood. At the same time her character struggles to find her purpose and identity in life in addition to being a mother and the wife of a famous director.

Plumb, who is the star, the director and the screenwriter,  has a real gift for physical comedy. She plays a Brooklyn actress and overtaxed mother named Penny, who spends most of her day caring and doting on her impish and energetic sons, Cody, 4, and Walker, 7 (Plumb and Cianfranc’s real-life sons). Meanwhile, her husband Matt is a busy theater director (played by Cianfrance), who is too self-obsessed or distracted to give her any emotional support. When Penny seems to be having a meltdown, he asks if she is having a midlife crisis and suggests she get a facial. Then he dashes off to work, which he points out supersedes everything else because it pays the pills. The camera never directly films his face, which is obscured by cereal boxes or books. (The film was shot in the couple’s rambling and comfortable cluttered Brooklyn apartment.)

Working with a miniscule budget, Plumb said there were few takes and she didn’t storyboard. Although there was a script, the children’s scenes were all improvised. Her sons worked only four hours a day and of course she found herself always “overly protective.” There was also some resistance at first by her impish boys. “On the first day Walker quit,” Plumb said. But they ended up loving it. “When it was over, they were sad at the end. They were crying.”

Although she’s a well-known visual artist she’s new at the film business. She didn’t know how to shoot a movie.  “I didn’t know anything but low angle. I put the camera down here,” she pointed low. “I never moved a camera before. Derek tried to sketch something out real quick,” she said, but, “It would drive me crazy.” The best advice he gave her: “Keep it simple.”  The fact is she’s made an savvy film that witty, fun and smart.

When an audience member asked during the Q&A  if she’d ever gone experienced a breakdown like the character she plays, Plumb replied, “Certainly I’ve experienced a crisis for sure. You panic. The children always come first and they come first until 9 at night,” she said. “And all of my friends, they’ve all gone through it. It’s harder for moms. It’s crazy but you get through it. That’s what this (film) is for as well.”

Plumb made it clear the unsupportive husband in the film was not based on Cianfrance. “He’s not my real husband. He’s nothing like that.” When she first envisioned the husband, his role was  “just to open a door and close it,” because, “I wanted this to be a mother’s story. I wanted it to be about the mom. It could be a single mom, a mom who has a husband who works all the time, who could be any mother,” she said. “The husband is a stereotype of the 50’s, 60’s kind of man.”

Finally Cianfrance decided he would play Plumb’s film husband because of a bedroom scene.  “He didn’t want anybody sleeping in his bed,” Plumb said. So she told husband, “If you want to do it, fine,” and his reply, “Yeah maybe I should do it,” worked out. “I’m so happy he did. He’s a good actor. I didn’t know he was so good,” Plum mused. “I didn’t know he could act, but he can,” she laughed.

Part of the humor is how Plumb finds Beckett-like absurdity in every day events and situations, whether it’s to tear open a box of cereal, hold up a tampon box or drink out of a curly straw. She has a tour-de-force moment in a disaster of a gown big as a mountain, where she struggles to sit and then stand in sky-high platform heesl, while no one around her, including her husband – Cianfrance backlit –  even notices her.

Plumb is lanky and loose-limbed and fun to watch, whether she dashes down a busy street with a stroller, pushes a kid’s bike while she balances a  gown or her head, or makes unsexy and inept moves as a pole dancer. Meanwhile she’s a quick change artist, changing costumes and characters and genders, including one hilarious scene where she leaves her apartment dressed as a man, dons a mustache and puts on a  masculine swagger. She’s obviously been inspired by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. And this last scene, where she leaves her home disguised as a man made an impression on Gosling, who plays a macho guy with tattoos, muscles and guns in “The Place Beyond the Pines.”

During the Q&A, Gosling asked: “You play so many scenes as a man. What’s the key to playing a man?”

Without referring to him by name, Plumb replied, “When I went to acting school my teacher told me, if you want to walk like a man you’ve got to separate your legs, and walk like this, loose.” Plumb demonstrated and swung her legs wide apart as she walked. “It’s starts physically, then you become a man, so I just started. It’s so amazing to step into those shoes to see what it’s like,” being the other half. “Men are fun to play.”

Someone asked if things would have worked differently for her character if she had had a daughter instead of sons. Plumb replied thoughtfully. “Yeah. It’s a whole different thing. It’s a different dynamic. It would have been different I think. I do want a daughter but I’m not having anymore,” she laughed.

Barbara Walters returned to “The View” this morning with a big announcement. It came after a weekend of speculation after a Thursday gossip item that she was going to proclaim her total retirement. “If and when I have an announcement to make, I would make it on this program.” Walters looked extremely healthy and with it, and not like someone who was going to retire from anything–including a fight with ABC over her future.

http://www.showbiz411.com/2013/04/02/exclusive-feisty-barbara-walters-i-wasnt-retiring-from-anything

Later in the show, Walters exclaimed to “General Hospital” actor Tony Geary “35 years–who has a job that long?” Everyone in the audience laughed, and clapped. Even Walters surprised herself. But she is clearly not ready to give into ABC. And the planted gossip item on Thursday–meant to seal her fate–has backfired.

www.showbiz411.com/2013/03/28/ambush-barbara-walters-has-no-plans-to-retire-from-the-view

UPDATE 11 AM MONDAY: Walters says “I have no announcement to make.”

Monday morning on “The View” comes the long time star of ABC’s soap opera “General Hospital,” Anthony Geary. But a bigger soap opera is looming right there on “The View,” and it’s much more complex than anything Luke and Laura have had to face. The show returns live with Barbara Walters and the pressing question: is she announcing her retirement from ABC News and this program? Or did ABC leak a story to media sites on Thursday knowing that Friday was a holiday and that the story of Walters’ exit would become a fact before it could be disputed?

Even producers at “The View” have no idea what Walters is planning to say when she marches on stage at 11am Eastern. True, she’s 83 years old, and had some illness issues this winter. But Walters is a supreme game player. She will not go down without a fight. And while ABC News chief Ben Sherwood is young enough to be her son, Walters is no fragile senior citizen. She has a lot of fight left in her.

Since the story broke on Thursday, there’s been a lot of strange stuff. On Friday’s “Good Morning America,” the panel at the desk actually discussed this as if they weren’t on ABC, and weren’t being directed about what to say. They sure made it seem like Walters was leaving her career.

But I told you immediately on Thursday, Walters’ conversations, according to sources, had been about leaving ABC News. She planned to stay with “The View” indefinitely, certainly beyond May 2014. This May the show will lose Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck (who hasn’t announced her plans yet). But there’s obviously a power struggle afoot. And lest anyone forget, Walters will remind you: she invented “The View” and owns a piece of it.

So what will she say? A source says: “I can’t believe she will just give in and say it’s over. I think she’ll say she’s thought about retiring from News, and intends to stay with the show.”

I can tell you about a time I was with Walters when she went through tense negotiations with ABC News in June 1991. I was interviewing her for Vogue. At that exact moment, ABC News chief Roone Arledge was making it tough for Walters, who then had “20/20” as well as her specials, and substituted on “Nightline” and on “GMA.” Things were so fragile that Walters brought Henry Kissinger into it. (I can still remember her asking me to leave the office so she could take a call from “Doctor Kissinger.”) Eventually she rode it out. Arledge succumbed, and Walters made it through the 1990s at least.

Can she do it again? Her back is against the wall. Syndication is an iffy deal for any kind of specials. Larry King has already shown that it’s not easy to function from the outside. Of course here’s a crazy scenario: Walters leaves ABC involuntarily but lets them make a big deal of her retirement. She immediately, even at age 84 or 85, makes a deal with NBC, appears as a guest host on “Today,” and gets some killer interview. Stranger things have happened.

Literally–stay tuned…