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Hello Dalai: Richard Gere Bringing Tibetan Leader to Radio City

Roger Friedman
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Hello Dalai: Richard Gere Bringing Tibetan Leader to Radio City

Richard Gere puts his money where his mouth is, and he’s consistent.

One of the last great movie stars, Gere is underwriting appearances later this month by exiled (since 1959) Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama. Gere is producing a weekend of lectures by His Holiness at Radio City Music Hall.

Unlike Kabbalah or Scientology, studying with the Dalai Lama is pretty much a cheap ticket. The average price is between $40 and $60. According to an aide working for The Gere Foundation, originally one of the classes was a six parter with each segment costing sixty bucks.

But now they’re considering breaking it down so “students” can pick and choose the classes individually.

“The Gere Foundation sponsored the Dalai Lama — who lives in northern India–in Central Park, which was free,” said the aide. “But it costs to take Radio City.”

What’s even cooler: you don’t have to buy special books or ribbons or get e-metered  And you can download the basic literature now for free from dalailamany.org in advance of the May 21 start date.

By the way the Gere Foundation is a nice little operation. Gere gives away around $250,000 to worthy causes, many of which are Tibet-related. But he also sends a hefty check to the Motion Picture TV Fund, which is now under siege over attempting to close its long term care facility. The irony is, I don’t think Gere has ever gone to the swanky pre-Oscar party for the Fund. He just writes the check.

Showbiz411 and New York Daily News at Cannes

Roger Friedman
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Showbiz411 and New York Daily News at Cannes

Starting next week, showbiz411.com heads to the Cannes Film Festival with regular updates beginning on Wednesday, May 12th. But also check for us on the website of the New York Daily News (www.nydailynews.com) and in the actual printed Daily News. That’s right. Remember the newspaper? It’s black and white and read all over!

Madonna Wants Robin Hood’s King John for Her Movie

Roger Friedman
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Madonna Wants Robin Hood’s King John for Her Movie

Here’s a little more on Madonna‘s movie, “W.E”– and some other movie bits…

According to sources, the Material Director wants hot as a pistol young actor Oscar Isaac, who plays King John in the new Ridley Scott directed “Robin Hood,” for her film.

Isaac would be one half of the modern romantic couple in the movie, opposite Abbie Cornish. Not yet cast are the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (see story below), who play counterparts of the modern couple.

Isaac–who’s already starred in “Agora” and “Balibo”– is ready to have his breakthrough moment. Next year he stars in “Sucker Punch,” directed by Zack Snyder. Madonna’s movie can only up his profile, whether the film turns out good or bad…

“Robin Hood,” meantime, screened on Tuesday night for long-lead press, and got great advance word. It’s said to be a real “movie” with few special effects and little CGI. There’s a lot of real action, however. Maybe it will start a trend back to real moviemaking. This “Robin Hood” also sets up its own sequel with a splashy ending that presages Robin Hood’s days of robbing the rich and helping the poor.

…

Oliver’s Army Is Ready for Cannes

Roger Friedman
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Oliver’s Army Is Ready for Cannes

News from the IFP dinner for a mere one hundred or so filmmakers last night at Diane von Furstenberg’s design studio:

Oliver Stone is getting ready for Cannes and South America with “Wall Street 2” and “South of the Border.” He chatted with Sony Pictures Classics’ Michael Barker, and DVF herself…”Wall Street 2″ hits Cannes on Friday, March 14th…Josh Brolin should be in attendance, as well as star Michael Douglas…

Lovely and amazing Patricia Clarkson (pictured here) –with “Cairo Time” and only three more films in the can–brought best-bud, poet Howard Altmann, to dinner. The two often perform readings of Altmann’s work at Barnes & Noble, etc. Altmann has a new collection out from Turtle Point Press…

Joel Schumacher is prepping “Trespass,” a home invasion thriller. Casting is underway, with actors to be announced shortly…

Jake Paltrow, Gwyneth’s talented bro, is negotiating to do his second feature film this fall. Paltrow has a cameo in “Greenberg,” out now…

Gwyneth and mom Blythe Danner will not do “A Little Night Music” on Broadway. “My daughter will not leave London and her kids,” Danner explained…

Martin Scorsese is already screening his Fran Lebowitz documentary for friends. Reaction is good, and Lebowitz comes off as glibly gifted. But I hope it explains why she wrote just two books, and almost nothing in 30 years. And how she’s lived since then thanks to the kindness of friends…

The dinner honored Tatiana von Furstenberg and Francesca Gregorini, whose terrific “Tanner Hall” will be released this fall. Also in attendance: Famed director Mira Nair, actor-director Ed Burns, Amber Tamblyn, Lily Rabe, Geoff Fletcher, Annette Tapert, and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters...The whole gang proceeded to the Boom Boom Room, and for all I know, they are still there…

Katie Couric Tribute Dinner Brings Tight-Lipped CBS and CBS Execs Together

Roger Friedman
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Katie Couric Tribute Dinner Brings Tight-Lipped CBS and CBS Execs Together

Matt Lauer told me right before the annual mid year dinner for the Museum of the Moving Image last night that he wasn’t going to “roast” honoree Katie Couric.

“Just lightly grill her,” he quipped.

Well, Matt did roast Katie, and he was pretty damned funny. The dinner also honored CNN chief Phil Kent, which meant that the room was filled with folks from CNN and CBS–lots of rumors about their merger and a lot of people denying it. On the CNN side: Anderson Cooper, Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes, Wolf Blitzer. On the CBS side: “Evening News” producer Rick Kaplan, and Katie’s beau, Brooks Perlin. But no Les Moonves, which led to Lauer’s hysterical introduction.

Lauer reported that Katie had just asked him a week ago over lunch to make the toast. Lauer said he wondered why she’d waited so long, until the last minute. “I didn’t want it to weigh on you,” he reported Couric said. Then he got a letter from Moonves, thanking him for stepping in, and since so many others had turned the job down. There were also a couple of good zingers about Sarah Palin. “Katie has interviewed people who are world leaders, and who would like to be,” joked Matt, who also called the decade he worked with Katie her “Lauer Years.” “We had five great years,” he said, “although we worked together for ten!”

Couric, taking the podium, answered that she’d also been turned down by Al Roker. She said of the CBS-CNN rumor, “I’m worried I’ll have to go on a date with Larry King. Or get locked in the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”

As for the merger, Kent told the assembled diners, including members of the Scotto family–from Katie’s favorite restaurant, Fresco–really, nothing useful. “Don’t believe everything you read in the paper,” Kent said, “but everything you see on CBS and CNN.”

Madonna May Revise Duke of Windsor’s Nazi Sympathies in Film

Roger Friedman
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Madonna May Revise Duke of Windsor’s Nazi Sympathies in Film

Madonna is interviewed by director Gus van Sant in the new Interview magazine. Let’s say this now: I cannot wait to see the movie she intends to direct, called “W.E.” It promises to be smashing.

Forget reports from the UK that the script is an abomination. We now have it from Madonna’s own words.

Somewhow “W.E.” concerns the Duke and Duchess of Windsor–aka the former King Edward VIII and his American wife, Mrs. Wallis Simpson. Madonna calls King Edward “the guy” in the interview. Oh yes the guy. She says: “They’re a very controversial couple. People have lots of different notions about them. I mean, the guy, Edward, gave up the most powerful position in the world for this woman.

“But people have accused Wallis of all kinds of things. They’ve said that she put a spell on Edward. They’ve said that she was a hermaphrodite and that he was gay. They’ve said that they were Nazi sympathizers. It’s just the usual lynch-mob mentality that descends upon somebody who has something that lots of other people don’t have. They have to diminish you by saying there’s something wrong with you, or accuse you of something that they really don’t have the knowledge or the right to.”

From this we may draw the conclusion that Madonna is going to ignore the vast historical record of the Duke and Duchess’s relationship with the Nazis and Hitler. I guess she will not include their 1937 visit to Germany as Hitler’s personal guests, and the reams of communication compiled by the FBI and British intelligence. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jan/25/freedomofinformation.monarchy

Anyway: the Interview interview is full of fun facts including the possibility that Madonna seems to warn her employer, Live Nation, not to expect much in the way of music soon:

“I haven’t really been focused as much as I should be on the music part of my career because this movie has just consumed every inch of me. Between that and my four children, I don’t have the time or the energy for anything else.’

Live Nation rescued Madonna from Warner Music Group last year with a $125 million contract.

(My Live Nation sources say they aren’t concerned. “She just finished the second highest grossing tour of all time,” observes an insider.)

Madonna also questions how people will find out about her new DVD of a tour. “I  think I have a fan club,” she says with complete dis ingenuousness. Indeed. Madonna, according to my sources, spends a great deal of time signing autographs and merchandise in her massive West 64th St. home, and directing fan club activity.

Iron Man 2 Full of Weird Cameos, But It’s Robert Downey Jr.’s Movie

Roger Friedman
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Iron Man 2 Full of Weird Cameos, But It’s Robert Downey Jr.’s Movie

“Iron Man 2” hits theatres on Friday and it’s chock full of strange cameo appearances.

Oracle’s founder Larry Ellison gets to say a line and some face time. It also looks like he may have put quite a bit of money into “Iron Man 2.” Oracle is the most prominent advertiser on screen. Its logo turns up constantly. It’s worse than when Starbucks plastered its name all over one of the “Austin Powers” movies years ago. Yikes!

There are also appearances by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly. Your heart kind of sinks when you the the former, a supposedly “serious” journalist. O’Reilly is just there as a punch line.

Of course, Marvel’s Stan Lee shows up. But the saddest cameo is from DJ Adam Goldstein, who subsequently killed himself with drugs. He looks bright and happy in the film.

All that aside, “Iron Man 2,” again directed by Jon Favreau, is a lot of big studio noisy fun. It’s going to make a mint, too, when it arrives on Friday. Early word was that it wasn’t as good as the first “Iron Man.” But guess what? It’s just fine, a solid A minus I think, with a witty script from Justin Theroux. The first “Iron Man” was a novelty, and Robert Downey Jr was a surprise as Tony Stark. Now we’re used to it. But that doesn’t mean anything negative.

In fact, Favreau, Theroux and Downey have really pulled it together. Gwyneth Paltrow is back and her role is larger this time as Tony Stark’s pining love interest and assistant. Plus, Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, and without a doubt Sam Rockwell are all excellent additions to the group this time around. Rockwell just about steals the movie, and he gets to dance–he’s a great improvisational dancer–on top of it. Don Cheadle also joins the cast, replacing Terrence Howard, and doing a fine job.

But “Iron Man 2” is all about Robert Downey Jr. Tony Stark has a line early in the script about life, death and redemption that really sums up Downey’s life and career. After all his personal disasters, who could have guessed that he’d triumph in the end. And he’s a pleasure all the way through. Considering the abundance of plot points and characters this time around, it’s a tribute to Downey that he keeps it all straight, and leads this crazy Chapter 2 with authority, wit and grace.

So now what? The whole movie is a set up for Chapter 3, as well as “Thor” and “Avengers” movies. You almost can’t wait to see Jackson and Johansson in “The Avengers.” When I saw Scarlett over the weekend, I said, “So now you’re a super hero.” She replied, without flinching, “I was always a super hero.” It does seem like that, seeing her in “Iron Man 2.” Quentin Tarantino‘s going to be calling her for “Kill Bill Part 3” when he sees her here!

Get ready for box office alerts all weekend. “Iron Man 2” is going to set records.

Sting’s “Soul Cages” Headed to Broadway

Roger Friedman
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Sting’s “Soul Cages” Headed to Broadway

The cat is out of the bag. On his blog today, Mike Fleming writes about Sting making a deal to write a musical with Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and composer Brian Yorkey, of “Next to Normal.”

I knew about this weeks ago, but was waiting until the rest of the story firmed up.

I will tell you the part that Mike doesn’t have: Sting and Yorkey are going to adapt Sting’s amazing 1991 album, “The Soul Cages,” for the theater. (That album included the hits, “All this Time” and “Mad About You” as well as the title track.) This autobiographical work will likely include other songs, maybe new music, and certainly encompass Sting’s memoir, “Broken Music.”

Yorkey has already traveled with Sting to his place of birth in Newcastle, England, met his relatives and friends, seen all the landmark spots that appear in Sting’s songs and writing. What comes out of these trips and meetings should be quite wonderful, but we won’t see the fruits of it for some time. First, Sting has to complete his symphony tour this summer, play the Hollywood Bowl on June 15th and the Metropolitan Opera on July 13th and 14th.

There’s also the matter of the Rainforest Foundation concert at Carnegie Hall on May 13th with Elton John and Lady GaGa. The next morning, Sting kicks off the Today show concert series on Rockefeller Plaza. Whew!

youtube.com/watch?v=2vAQx1y1CcE

Tony Awards Snub Morticia, Gomez But Cite Rhoda, Frasier

Roger Friedman
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Tony Awards Snub Morticia, Gomez But Cite Rhoda, Frasier

Rhoda Morgenstern has finally gotten her great citation. Valerie Harper, very deservedly, has been nominated for a Tony Award for Lead Actress in a Play, in “Looped.”  It’s a nice vindication.

She won’t win; that distinction will go to Viola Davis, in “Fences.” But still: Harper is in pretty swell company, with Laura Linney, Linda Lavin, and Jan Maxwell.

And Frasier Crane, aka Kelsey Grammer, is in for Lead Actor in a Musical, with his colleague Douglas Hodge in “La Cage Aux Folles.”

But there’s no love from the Tony’s for “The Addams Family,” a critic proof musical that’s making millions even as we sit here snapping fingers to the TV theme song. Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth were each skipped over, as was the show. Go figure: the rotten score by Andrew Lippa did get nominated. In “Full Disclosure”: it shouldn’t have.

Also completely overlooked: last fall’s “A Steady Rain,” which had very good performances by Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman. That’s too bad, because Craig especially deserved it.

But the rest of the Tony nominations are in sync with the prior Outer Critics Circle, which turned out to be a good predictor. The OCC remembered Jude Law for “Hamlet” and cited Jan Maxwell twice. So did the Tonys. The kooky Drama Desk, however, simply nominated everything — just to cover themselves.

This year’s Tony Award show on CBS–Sunday, June 13th–should be pretty good. In addition to Harper and Grammer, the other well known faces will be Jude Law, Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johansson, Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Catherine Zeta Jones, Angela Lansbury, and so on. Lots and lots of stars should produce some good ratings. Maybe Green Day will appear for “American Idiot.” Cool.

PS The original musical category is a mess. “American Idiot” is in my opinion the Best New Musical. But its director, Michael Mayer, wasn’t nominated. Instead, the most deserving director of a Musical who was nominated should be Marcia Milgrim Dodge. She made the revival of “Ragtime” important and moving. She reinvented the show entirely from its original laborious production.

Lynn Redgrave: A Tragedy

Roger Friedman
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Lynn Redgrave: A Tragedy

Lynn Redgrave could actually boast that her Oscar nominations were three decades apart. She made an indelible impression in 1966’s “Georgy Girl” and was up for Best Actress. In 1999, she was back at the Oscars for Supporting Actress in “Gods and Monsters.” Just three years before, in 1996, she came ever so close with an outstanding performance in “Shine.”

Her dozens and dozens of roles also included a couple of unique ones: she was featured in Woody Allen’s adaptation of “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.” And she played the title role as Xaviera Hollander in “The Happy Hooker.”

And that was just her movie work. She also had three Tony nominations for Best Actress in a Play.

In 1981, Redgrave had an Emmy nomination when she took over Glenda Jackson’s role in the TV version of “House Calls.”

While her sister Vanessa may have been known for more “serious” work, Lynn Redgrave held her own with the best. She could do anything, from comedy to drama to the absurd. She could be absolutely hilarious on screen or stage. Devastating in fact.

In person, Lynn Redgrave was never less than a delight. She held her head high during a period of crazy personal turmoil when her husband turned out to be a bona fide rat.

I do remember Lynn, Vanessa, and Natasha Richardson all at the premiere of “The White Countess” in 2005–in which they all starred for Merchant-Ivory. What a grand, fun night. How very sad to lose so many people talented people–Lynn, Natasha, Corin Redgrave–too soon, and in such a short time. It’s our loss.

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