One Rolling Stone is gathering no sales. Mick Jagger‘s weird super group album, “Super Heavy,” has sold only 33,000 copies. It’s dead on arrival. “Super Heavy” was a group formed by Mick with Joss Stone, Dave Stewart, Damien Marley, and composer A. R. Rahman. Released by some part of the Universal Music Group, Super Heavy was in trouble almost from the start. A single was released during the summer, but was kept a mystery. By the time the full album was released on September 19th, there had been little to no publicity. Talk about no buzz: it was just zzzzz. It’s strange, too, because the album is good. The songs are catchy and well made. But seemingly no funds went to promotion. One month later, the project remains less than cult favorite since really, no one’s responded to it at all. The unfortunate participant is Joss Stone. She could have been Adele before there was Adele. But bad choices have left her an asterisk in the pop business. She needs to find real management and a vision for her career. As for Mick, he does have another group. Their 50th anniversary is at hand.
Exclusive: NY Film Critics Will Vote Early on November 28th
The New York Film Critics Circle will announce their winners on November 28th. The move is designed to beat the god awful National Board of Review, which will announce their phoney baloney nominations on December 1st. The NY Film Critics are actual critics. The NBR is a cabal of fans run by a woman named Annie Schulhof. The latter group is the scourge of the New York film community, loathed by publicists and joked about by filmmakers and stars. But they’ve become useful over the years as a way for film companies to advertise some kind of prestige looking award in ads for Christmas. By jumping ahead of them the New York Film Critics may dilute that. The NBR charges $600 for members to belong, and another $600 to attend their “gala” event in January. This year, the Film Critics’ event will be held a day earlier, on January 9th, than the NBR’s.
PS The National Board of Review, I’ve written about a lot. The winners are chosen by design to get the studios to buy tables at their event. They also err on the side of two stars, Clint Eastwood and George Clooney, who are their bread and butter. Schulhof also has a notoriously close relationship with Warner Bros. This year, the betting money will be on “J. Edgar,” “Ides of March,” and “The Descendants.” There will also undoubtedly be an animation award for their other standard bearer, Steven Spielberg, for “Tin Tin.” Indeed, you can pretty much make up the list now of NBR winners. Why wait?
Studio 54, the PG Version, Returns for One Night Without Liza, Calvin, or Andy
This morning, Studio 54 will wake up with a hangover, look around the floor for its clothes, and try to remember what happened last night. Now a dowager theatre home to the Roundabout, Studio will recall celebrating like it was 1977 last night, and was younger than springtime.
Oh yes, Studio 54. Liza, Calvin, Andy, Halston, Truman Capote. Bianca Jagger on the white horse. The doormen, the barricades, the coke, and the quaaludes. In 1977, New York City was pretty much on the skids. Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager threw the most decadent party in the history of the world. It would have gone forever except for tax evasion and jail for the owners. When it came back, under Mark Fleishmann, it was cool but not the same. Nothing ever is.
So last night, Sirius XM recreated Studio for just one night in its original home, now the Roundabout Theater’s place of business. Sirius XM has a Studio 54 channel that plays disco music from the era, so they commemorated it by reviving the club–down to the big silvery moon with the coke spoon hovering over the stage. And if you build it, they will come–from former doormen Richie Notar and Marc Benecke, to pr lady Myra Scheer to Schrager (now a wildly successful hotelier) to Carmen D’Alessio, who did all the legendary events. Liza and Calvin did not attend. But Keith Richards and Patti Hansen made the scene, along with Kevin Bacon, Naomi Campbell, Cameron Diaz, Clive Davis, Nikki Haskell, Denise Rich, Susan Lucci, Randy Jones from the Village People, Carol Alt, Donald and Melania Trump, Lance Bass and some reality TV people.
I heard Gayle King was there. Ryan Phillippe was expected as we were leaving. Scott Greenstein and Steve Leeds from Sirius got kudos for pulling it off– the stage throbbed with dancers, the deejay mixed Gloria Gaynor and Donna Summer circa 1977 with Lady Gaga and Adele. The boy waiters were shirtless, and wore electric blue hot pants. Drag queens were de rigeur. There was a slight smell of marijuana, but nothing like the old days. No smoke, and no coke. Perrier was poured in the entry way. But the party was still going on, well after 2am. The irony: Marc and Richie wouldn’t have let most of those people in, back in the day. As Faulkner put it, Memory believes before knowing remembers.
Laura Dern, Diane Ladd Ready Scorsese-Produced Martha Mitchell Movie
Mother and daughter Oscar nominees Diane Ladd and Laura Dern are working a lot together these days. They co-star in HBO’s new hit show, “Enlightened.” And now they tell our LEAH SYDNEY that their long-awaited film about larger than life Nixon era Watergate character Martha Mitchell is finally coming together. Ladd said: “It’s written, and I’m going to direct it. I co-wrote it with Scott Alsop. We wrote 14 drafts of the script. Martin Scorcese is the Executive producer and he said it’s one of the ten best scripts he’s ever read in his life. ‘I’ve been working on this for over 25 years. I play Martha and Laura will play the younger Martha. A big star is going to play [Nixon attorney general] John Mitchell but I can’t tell you right now. Hopefully we’ll start shooting sometime in 2012.”
Did she and Martha ever meet? Ladd replied: “Not in the body –ok? Read the book,” she instructed, referring to her now being edited memoir. As for directing, Ladd said she is ready: “I’ve already directed a film which I got great reviews for. I won three best director awards. My country is not a country that adores it’s female directors I’m sorry to say. Spain, France and England are better. It took 85 years for Kathryn Bigelow to win [an Oscar], and she had to do a war picture to do it. I don’t now what’s going to happen. You can’t worry about the results. You have to concentrate on the being and the doing. That’s what I’m about. “
Laura, whose father is actor Bruce Dern, says she’s just fine working so much with her mother. They’ve done a lot before, including David Lynch‘s “Wild at Heart.”
“The best thing is that she’s an incredible actor, and she’s brave enough to completely detach from any projection she of wants to look like as my Mom. She’s purely in this character who’s a complicated and withdrawn mother. If there is any worse thing it would have been 20 years ago, when I worked with her. I was so young, that I was more determined to have my independence than to enjoy the ride of working with her. Now that I’m forty I just enjoy the ride, so it’s a double blessing.”
PS In case you’re wondering: Diane Ladd has three Best Supporting Actress nominations for “Rambling Rose,” “Wild at Heart,” and “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Laura Dern has a Best Actress nomination for “Rambling Rose.” And Bruce Dern has a Best Supporting Actor nomination for “Coming Home.”
Mel Gibson’s Horrible Father Said to Be Dying: Source
Sources in Los Angeles tell me that Mel Gibson‘s horrible 93 year old father, Hutton Gibson is dying. As readers of this column know, usually I report imminent deaths of well known people with great reverence. That won’t be the case for Hutton Gibson, a notorious Holocaust denier and anti-Catholic. It was Hutton Gibson for whom Mel built his Holy Family Church in Agoura Hills, California, for a group that disparages the Pope and isn’t recognized by the archdiocese.
In 2003, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported Hutton Gibson was a featured speaker at a conference sponsored by the Barnes Review and the American Free Press, both of which regularly carry anti-Semitic articles and reprint writings by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders. His legacy includes a book called “Is the Pope Catholic?”
Here’s what he said about the Holocaust, lest we forget. And remember, Mel Gibson has refused to apologize for this. “There were too many survivors.”
Hutton Gibson: “These people [World War II Nazis] are efficient. They know how to do things, and if they had set out to kill six million Jews, they would have done it. But all we hear about is Holocaust survivors. ‘Oh, we knew it happened. Here is a survivor, there is a survivor. My father and mother were survivors.’ They weren’t that efficient. There were too many survivors. And they claim there were six million in Poland. After the war, there were 200,000, it is said. Therefore, he must have killed six million of them. They simply got up and left. They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles. They have to have some place to go where there is money. No, they don’t work anywhere where they can get out of it. They are great pencil pushers and they are the superior people, and therefore they are entitled to the top jobs, supervisory stuff and so on.”
Hutton Gibson will not be missed.
Patti Labelle Sings for Denise Rich; Jackie Mason Critiques Joan Rivers
What a day! And a night! Around 9pm, Naomi Campbell, looking elegant and sophisticated in a stunning black dress, told me she was going to an even bigger charity event in Cannes next May than she did this year. She’d just spoken on the stage at Denise Rich‘s Angel Ball at Cipriani downtown, to a crowd that included famed singer Natalie Cole, rapper Eve, R&B singers Estelle and Anthony Hamilton (http://www.anthonyhamilton.com), model Estelle Warren, actor Mark Linn Baker, plus Clive Davis, Nikki Haskell, designer Tommy Hilfiger and his beautiful wife Dee, Lorraine Bracco, Kyle Maclachlan, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Russell Simmons (who said he’s been down to Zuccotti Park every day), Nancy (the ex Mrs, Les) Moonves, art dealer Tony Shafrazi, Pantone creator Larry Herbert and his dancing, charitable wife Michelle, plus Naomi’s Russian billionaire boyfriend Vlad Doronin and hundreds of very wealthy, formally dressed, extremely generous and Botoxed New Yorkers. Patti Labelle sang “Over the Rainbow,” Nile Rodgers and Chic performed “Le Freak” and “Good Times,” the inexplicably famous Kim Kardashian swanned around the room for no reason, and everyone ate delicious lamb chops. The crowd also got Romero Britto designed gift bags filled with makeup, shampoo and rich cookies. Denise, who’s been doing this since around 1999, raised even more millions for cancer research, which she does very well…
…Earlier in the day, at the Pierre Hotel ballroom, the Center for Communications: I sat at lunch next to legendary comedian Jackie Mason, who critiqued Joan Rivers as she presented an award to much liked AMC president and CEO Josh Sapan. “She’s very funny,” Jackie said. “But she tries to get free tickets to my shows. I won’t give them to her. I don’t even know her.” Didn’t they pal around during the Ed Sullivan years, I asked? Jackie, who seems basically the same as he did 10, 20, 30, and 40 years ago, said, “No.”What did he think of her plastic surgery? “What’s the difference?” he said. “It’s not about that.”
“Saturday Night Live” star Fred Armisen preceded Joan, but kept it simple, short, and straight. No jokes, really. Joan was hilarious, of course, lampooning her own show on the WE network, which falls under Sapan’s purview. Jackie, by the way, is trying to bring a new one man show to Broadway this winter. Does have it a title? “No, who cares? It’s me. That’s all people care about.” Actually, I found it kind of soothing to have Mason’s voice burbling next to me. It’s like eating a knish after a long time and really liking it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjv8EpSj97s
“Gotti” Movie Exec Producer: “I’ve never encountered anything so difficult in my life”
Exclusive: Both screenwriter James Toback and finance man Salvatore Carpanzano say they never approved a recent announcement naming them Executive Producers of “Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father.” The movie, still lacking a start date, is in financial trouble as I reported exclusively here first weeks ago.
Now I’ve spoken with Carpanzano, who says that he’s never met Toback, and didn’t tell Marco Fiore, the film’s producer, to put his name in public. Carpanzano tells me he represents a $280 million foreign fund that he’d make available for films. But he says that Fiore has no facility for accepting money for “Gotti.” So far, Carpanzano says, he’s lost money on the film– interest on the “blocked” $280 million. He declines to say how much so far, or who he represents. “It’s just old money from Europe,” he explains.
In an unusually frank, wide ranging talk, Carpanzano did tell me that indeed, like Fiore, he spent time in Allenwood State Penitentiary. He logged 33 months there for helping to steal 100 cars from an auto dealer in the mid 1990s. (It’s a long story.) He says he did not meet Fiore there, however. Carpanzano conceded that he’s been at the losing end of many civil lawsuits, and was recently arrested in Scarsdale, New York for driving with a suspended license. Carpanzano managed to go 27 years without being pulled over. He says, “That’s from 1984. I know everyone [in Scarsdale] and they handcuffed me.” However, he insists that his worst days are long behind him, and that he’s regularly setting up deals for independent movie making. No details were given, however.
“I’m a very nice person,” Carpanzano says. “I had trouble, and it was years ago.”
In the case of “Gotti,” Carpanzano seems to be locked in a tug of war with Fiore and another backer, Fay Devlin.
“I met Mark when he was looking for funding,” Carpanzano says, only this past July–ten months after “Gotti” was announced. “We only do large projects. The home office is not here in the US. We do projects in Turkey, large projects. They came to us for funding. The company’s been involved in motion pictures funding. I haven’t before. That’s how I met Fiore. We weren’t friends or knew each other. I believe there are other underlying issues there. Things have to be very clear.”
Carpanzano says he has a total amount of “two hundred million euros allocated to them [Fiore Films]. That’s for other projects also. They have inside problems. I’ve never encountered anything so difficult in my life. This is a lack of cooperation from bankers, from them. There’s something else there. Money is not the issue. It’s the safety of everything involved. There’s a big responsibility there. If you give someone $260, $280 million, you want to make sure you get it back.”
Where is the $280 million now? “I’d rather not say. But it’s available to them. But anyone who can put a project together can have it. Money is available for projects in Hollywood.”
I told Carpanzano I thought people reading this column would be thrilled to know that.
“We have an entertainment division, and we have our formulas. We have money available for people who have their ducks in a row.”
Carpanzano says as a funding agent he simply thought a movie directed by Barry Levinson, starring John Travolta and Al Pacino, was a good investment. “Each one of these actors has a formula. If you take Travolta and Pacino’s formulas, even if everyone says it’s a dog, don’t see it, we get our money back.”
And then there’s the matter of Carpanzano being “outed” by Fiore. He says he has no idea why Fiore named him Executive Producer. “We’re funding agents. But we don’t want our names all over everything. My company would never have allowed it. When I go to the movies, I go to sleep. I have absolutely no interest in John Gotti or John Gotti, Jr.”
Exclusive: Hear the Reason Oscar Isaac Will Star in Coen Bros.’ New Film
Note: If you came here looking for “Never Had” from the movie “10 Years” it’s been moved to a new post on this site– stay tuned–and check recent headlines. The song is now available with the album on iTunes.
Exclusive: Oscar Isaac, hot as a pistol, sings his own song “Never Had” in our audio player. It’s from the movie, “Ten Year,” which debuted in Toronto, Isaac, who more unfortunately appears in Madonna’s “W.E.,” is an accomplished musician. In the Coen Brothers film, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” he’ll play a folk singer from the 60s. Once you’ve heard “Never Had,” or Oscar’s other songs, you’ll see why he got this new plum role. A star is born, kids. Watch the movie “Balibo” to see him in action, in the meantime. PS Oscar looks enough like Cat Stevens to play him in a musical or biopic. Just sayin’…
“The Artist” Wins Hamptons Audience Award; “Oranges” Wins Hearts
“The Artist” won the the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Audience Award on Sunday night. The silent, black and white film has already been the talk of Cannes, has picked up a prize in Chicago, and was the audience award winner at the Toronto Film Festival. As well. Jean DuJardin won Best Actor in Cannes. It doesn’t open until November 23rd, but “The Artist” is picking up steam as the best movie Harvey Weinstein‘s bought outright in a while. While there’s plenty of Oscar talk, “The Artist” remains an underdog this far out from the early prizes in December and actual nominations in January.
Big movies, with lots of dialogue, from “War Horse” to “J. Edgar” to “Moneyball,” “Drive,” “The Iron Lady,” “Ides of March,” “Midnight in Paris,” “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” “Hugo,” “My Week with Marilyn,” and “Young Adult” have all kinds of leverage on inside tracks. But “The Artist” does seem to win over audiences wherever it plays…
…Plenty of films from other festivals played in the Hamptons, but Jim Loach’s “Oranges and Sunshine” made its debut there for Cohen Media. The newish company, founded by “Frozen River” producer and real estate magnate Charles Cohen, has already had a Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee earlier this year with “Outside the Law.” There’s more to come shortly, including the current “Chasing Madoff” documentary and the French feature “My Afternoons with Marguerite.”
“Oranges and Sunshine” opens next Friday and then fans out across the country. Past Oscar nominee Emily Watson plays real life British social worked Margaret Humphreys, who stumbled upon one of England’s great scandals a few years ago. She discovered that over 10,000 hildren had been illegally deported from the UK to Australia between 1947 and 1970. It was part of a government cover up that was aided by the monks of the Christian Brothers sect of the Catholic Church. Many of the children were left with the Brothers by parents who couldn’t take care of them, were tortured and abused, and then sent to Australia on ships. The children, none of whom were adopted, ended up living at a school outside of Perth called Bin Doon.
Humphreys, who came to the Hamptons Film Festival with her husband (a social worker who also went into the project full time), changed her life’s work. She’s spent the last 25 years reuniting families around the world. It’s an extraordinary story.
Humphreys found many of the parents had migrated to America over time, so there’s a U.S. tie in too as mothers and children meet for the first time. The title of the film comes from how the orphanages and church leaders pitched sunny, warm Australia to the British kids– as a place with “oranges and sunshine”–compared to rainy, cold Britain.
This is Jim Loach‘s first feature film after a successful career directing TV in London. He has the provenance, though: his father is acclaimed British filmmaker Ken Loach. He told me over the weekend that he’d waited to direct his first feature. He wanted to find the right material. When a friend told him Humphreys’ story, he knew he had it. “Lord of the Rings” actors Hugo Weaving and David Wenham co-star with Watson, who gives a beautifully restrained, moving performance.
Sue Mengers, Hollywood Super Agent and Hostess, Was Truly “A-List”
You’ll read a lot about Sue Mengers today. In the 1960s and 70s she was a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood. A super agent before there were any, Mengers guided the careers of Barbra Streisand and so many A list names. In Julia Phillips‘ infamous memoir, “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again,” Mengers figures largely in the failure of Phillips to make Erica Jong‘s “Fear of Flying” into a movie with Goldie Hawn. But Mengers also figures largely in a lot of movies that were made, like Peter Bogdanovich‘s classics “Paper Moon” and “What’s Up Doc?” as well as the remake of “A Star is Born” with Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, among others.
Mengers’ clients included Cher, Michael Caine, Ali McGraw, Gene Hackman, Faye Dunaway, Bob Fosse, Peter Bogdanovich, Tatum O’Neal, Ryan O’Neal, Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd. If there was a big deal or movie made with A list stars in the 1970s, Sue Mengers was at the center of it. Mengers was also incredibly loyal, perhaps wrongly, to corrupt movie exec David Begelman. Ironically Begelman’s whistleblower, actor Cliff Robertson, also died this year.
The great New York columnist, Aileen Mehle, aka “Suzy,” described Mengers thusly from the New York premiere of Steven Spielberg‘s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” produced by Julia Phillips in November 1977, at the end of a long list of heavy hitters: “…and Sue Mengers, the top Hollywood agent, a flying object who was identified a long time ago.”
In Rachel Abramowitz’s 2002 book, “Is That A Gun in Your Pocket?” about powerful women in Hollywood, Mengers–who’s maybe the only Hollywood agent ever interviewed by Mike Wallace for “60 Minutes” (1975)–spoke candidly about her then mythic status. By the mid 70s, she was known as not only the top agent, but Hollywood’s premier hostess. Streisand, Beatty, Nicholson, Hoffman were her regular guests. “Our house became like a restaurant,” she said. “The celebrities hadn’t come because they wanted to see me. They wanted to see each other. I was never the star at my own parties. I was the catalyst to bring creative people together.”