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Despite the coronavirus, Warner Bros. made money during the pandemic.
Their “Godzilla vs. Kong” hit $69 million over this weekend, the most any movie has grossed in the last year. The monster flick is head toward $100 million, which is quite an accomplishment considering social distancing and capacity limitations. People really wanted to see two old warriors slug it out one more time.
Everyone thought when Warner’s announced simultaneous releases in the theaters and on HBO Max that it would kill theater going. But Warner’s had the lions share of hits this season anyway in live attendance. In addition to “Godzilla,” they’ve had “Tenet” ($58 mil), “The Croods” ($56 mil), “Wonder Woman 1984” ($46 mil), and “Tom & Jerry” ($40 mil).
Warner’s has even scratched out some box office for their Oscar movie, “Judas and the Last Messiah, with over $5 million. And Denzel Washington in “The Little Things” has found just over $15 million so far. So someone went to the movies, and who ever they were, Warner Bros. was their host.
BTW, I’m hearing King Kong is asking for a lot of perks in his sequel contract. He was seen having lunch with Toby Emmerich last week in a back room on the Warner’s lot where he was eating the makers of “Chaos Walking” with fresh dips.
Tonight’s Saturday Night Live was bizarre, that’s all I can say.
Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan hosted, to promote her movie “Promising Young Woman.” I was certain there would be one or more parodies of the film as sketches, at least some reference to it.
There was NONE. Nothing, Like it didn’t exist. And the movie comes from Focus Features, a division of NBC Universal, the network of “SNL.”
There wasn’t even an for the movie until the very end of the show.
What?
Plus Kid Cudi, who cannot sing and doesn’t seem to be a rapper, was the musical guest. His second number was performed in a sun dress. I couldn’t tell if the shoes matched, or if he had a handbag to go with it.
“Weekend Update” was funny enough. A sketch about a couple in World War II with Mulligan and Mikey Day was very good. There was also a funny video parody of movies about lesbians, referencing films no one has seen. But nothing for “Promising Young Woman.”
The show is a mess. We’ll see what the ratings were, tomorrow.
PS My friend, journalist Steve Zeitchik, pointed out on Twitter that Mulligan’s monologue instead of reflecting the feminism of “Promising Young Woman,” relied on Carey’s husband, musician Marcus Mumford for some reason taking the spotlight.
Saturday night, Chloe Zhao won the DGA Award for directing “Nomadland.” Now she and the movie — with the Producers Guild Award and the Golden Globes, etc — are set to sweep the Oscars.
If only people were seeing “Nomadland” and we had a way of knowing it. Alas, no one knows where it’s playing, if it’s playing, and what the box office is. But hey– it’s an unusual year.
Here are all the DGA winners. Congrats to “Homeland,” which hasn’t been on the air for a year. And also to Betty Thomas, who I loved on “Hill Street Blues” and turned out to be a fine director.
Outstanding Directorial Achievement In Theatrical Feature Film
Chloé Zhao
Nomadland
(Searchlight Pictures)
Unit Production Manager: Mary Kerrigan
First Assistant Director: Mary Kerrigan
Outstanding Directorial Achievement Of A First-Time Feature Film Director
Darius Marder
Sound of Metal
(Amazon Studios)
Unit Production Manager: Amy Greene
First Assistant Director: Matthew Vose Campbell
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary
MICHAEL DWECK & GREGORY KERSHAW
The Truffle Hunters
(Sony Pictures Classics)
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Limited Series
SCOTT FRANK
The Queen’s Gambit
(Netflix)
First Assistant Director: Aldric La’auli Porter
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series
LESLI LINKA GLATTER
Homeland, “Prisoners of War”
(Showtime)
Unit Production Managers: Michael Klick, Philippa Naughten
First Assistant Director: Sunday Stevens
Second Assistant Director: Wendy Bledsoe
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series
SUSANNA FOGEL
The Flight Attendant, “In Case of Emergency”
(HBO Max)
Unit Production Manager: Bonnie Muñoz
First Assistant Director: Derek Peterson
Second Assistant Director: Jacquie Dore
Second Second Assistant Director: Zach Citarella
Location Manager: Chris Banks
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Variety/Talk/News/Sports – Regularly Scheduled Programming
DON ROY KING
Saturday Night Live, “Dave Chappelle; Foo Fighters”
(NBC)
Associate Directors: Michael Mancini, Michael Poole, Laura Ouziel-Mack
Stage Managers: Gena Rositano, Chris Kelly, Eddie Valk
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Variety/Talk/News/Sports – Specials
THOMAS SCHLAMME
A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote
(HBO Max)
Unit Production Manager: Debra James
First Assistant Director: Shawn Pipkin-West
Second Assistant Director: Courtney Franklin
Second Second Assistant Directors: Ni’cole Pettis, Cathy Bond
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Reality Programs
JOSEPH GUIDRY
Full Bloom, “Petal to the Metal”
(HBO Max)
Associate Director: Sean Galvin
Lead Stage Manager: Jimmy Chriss
Stage Managers: Rachel Shimko, Kristianna Laroda, Richard Melendez
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Children’s Programs
AMY SCHATZ
We Are the Dream: The Kids of the Oakland MLK Oratorical Fest
(HBO)
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials
MELINA MATSOUKAS
(Prettybird)
You Love Me, Beats by Dr. Dre – Translation
First Assistant Director: Paul Norman
Second Assistant Director: Don Johnson
HONORARY AWARDS
Robert B. Aldrich Award
Betty Thomas
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
Frank Capra Achievement Award
Brian Frankish
Ramsey Clark died on Saturday. He was 93, and famous for many things including being a former Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1967.
Clark’s obits in the New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters, and AP are interesting for things that aren’t mentioned.
For one, he is currently portrayed by Michael Keaton in Aaron Sorkin’s movie “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Ramsey testified in the 1970 trial, but not in front of the jury. Crazy judge Julius Hoffman woudn’t let him. Hoffman upheld the prosecution’s objections to 14 of Defense Attorney William Kunstler’s 38 questions to Clark, but Clark did testify that he had told the prosecutor Tom Foran to investigate the charges against the defendants through Justice Department lawyers “as is generally done in civil rights cases”, rather than through a grand jury.
You’d think that might seem important since the movie is nominated for an Oscar.
Clark also famously traveled to Hanoi in 1972, just as actress Jane Fonda did in a separate trip, to protest American involvement in the Vietnam war. It was a brave move on both their parts and brought them each massive amounts of criticism consequently. Still, they were proved to be right on all counts as the years passed and history acknowledged the U.S.’s mistakes in Vietnam.
Fonda, who has been scrubbed from the Clark obits, wrote eloquently about the trips on her blog in 2011. She said: “I became a target the government could use, to suggest that some POWs who had met with me while I was in Hanoi had been tortured into pretending they were anti-war. The same thing was done to try and frame former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, whose trip to North Vietnam followed mine.”
Who was the real Ramsey Clark? It’s going to take a lot more than reading the current obituaries to explain all that. I’m surprised by how they’ve been edited. What’s also interesting about Clark is this father. Tom Clark. was also Attorney General under Harry Truman for three years and was then appointed to the US Supreme Court. Tom Clark had to step down from the Supreme Court when Ramsey was appointed Attorney General. Many felt Tom Clark was very conservative on the Supreme Court. Ramsey Clark certainly went in the opposite direction of his father.
Voting for the Academy awards starts in five days, you know, on April 15th. In a normal year, there would be screenings, cocktail parties, Peggy Siegal lunches on the East Coast, Colleen Camp dinners on the west coast, for Academy members. (Next year, please God!)
This year, it’s silence.
So how to get out the vote? Billboards! Old fashioned billboards.
Last year, Brian Kennedy and his brother split up their partnership owning Regency Billboards in Los Angeles. They had all the prime spots where Academy voters — stuck in traffic — would see reminders of best films and performances. Brian took over ownership of Regency and now has the lion’s share of prime real estate around Tinseltown. Waiting for that light to change? Look, it’s a billboard! Want an Oscar? Call Brian Kennedy!
Currently Regency has 16 massive billboards placed in strategic locations across the L.A. area promoting movies from Netflix, Disney, Searchlight, Warner Bros, and Amazon Studios. The films include front runner “Nomadland,” plus “Mank,” “Soul,” “Tenet,” “Ma Rainey,” “Chicago 7,” “One Night in Miami,” “Borat 2,” and “The Sound of Metal.”
For “Nomadland,” which stars Frances McDormand, the whole billboard thing is a little ironic. A couple of years ago, McDormand won the Oscar for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and so did Sam Rockwell. And that was a movie about the influence of billboards. That was life helping the art it was all about in the first place.
Actress Charlyne Yi is well known from movies “Knocked Up” and “This is 40,” from the TV show “House” and dozens of other projects.
She’s
posted a message to Instagram accusing James Franco — already knee deep in trouble, scandal and lawsuits — of being a sexual predator. She says that “Knocked Up” star Seth Rogen, a close buddy of Franco — is complicit in Franco’s behavior.
She says she tried to leave Franco’s movie, “The Disaster Artist” because of his behavior but was prevented. She says she was offered a bribe of a better role in a different movie if she would withdraw her complaint.
It’s unclear what set her off a day ago when she posted this, but maybe she just reached the breaking point. She says Rogen knew about the bribe, and that Franco has a long history of preying on children.
Here’s the second part of her Post:
“Seth Rogen was one of the producers on this film so he definitely knows about the bribe and why I quit. Seth also did a sketch on SNL with Franco enabling Franco preying on children. Right after Franco was caught.
“Franco has a long history of preying on children.
“This is on top all the corrupt laws that protect predators made by violent white men.
“Denying/gaslighting is a tactic that abusers and enablers use that is psychological violence, & has serious affects: the survivor loses sense of reality/intuition to protect self from targeted again, PTSD, suicidal thoughts/suicide, etc”
This month is Sexual Assault Awareness Month when it should really be something men educate themselves about their whole life and learn how to be there & protect women, nonbinary, trans, etc—who are targeted.”
Neither Franco nor Rogen has responded to these accusations. The minute they do, I’ll update. Franco, in the middle of lawsuits, has his career on hold anyway right now. He joins Armie Hammer and Shia LaBeouf in the category of careers which may not easily be repaired.
Rogen, who’s made a career of being stoned, was recently signed to a Steven Spielberg movie.
When the publicist for City Winery wrote to me and said Patti Smith would be playing live there on Friday night, would I like to come? I responded: Yes, shall I come now?
I have not been to a live music in 13 months since the Allman Brothers Family Band Reunion at Madison Square Garden. Time just stopped after that.
And in that time, City Winery moved from Varick Street in West Soho to 16th Street and the West Side Highway, on a Pier below Chelsea Piers in a spot you would never have considered habitable.
But there is it, shiny and new, dazzling, really, a new City Winery replacing the one evicted from Varick Street by Disney/ABC, and also standing in for the recently departed nearby Highline Ballroom. It’s got a gorgeous concert hall, a separate restaurant on the water, all kinds of private nooks and crannies, and lots of wine.
The new City Winery opened briefly last year, then had to close again. This week it re-opened with a selection of musical performers. But Patti Smith? She is royalty, no? They call musical acts “artists” but she is an actual artist: rocker, poet, memoirist, essayist. Patti transcends most genres.
And there she was on the new City Winery stage with her son, Jackson Smith, and multi-talented Tony Shanahan. Just the three of them. Shanahan plays bass guitar, upright bass, piano, and sings. Jackson, whose father was the late Fred “Sonic” Smith, is astonishing guitarist. He makes the instrument sing. And Patti is, well, everything.
This trio played a gig in March, she said, at the Brooklyn Museum, but that wasn’t on a stage, “it was on the floor.” A year had passed before that, when they played the Fillmore West in San Francisco. That was their last show. So here they were, in front a socially distant crowd, in a soaring, gorgeous venue made of what looked like woven wood, or a very expensive basket. The sound was perfection, too. even from the balcony, where the press is sprinkled behind a low plexiglass buffer.
The show was winning because it was so ad hoc and loose. Patti recently turned 74, she says, but you’d never know it from her lithe movements on stage, and her mellifluous voice that seems richer and more textured than ever. It’s hard to remember that she was once considered “punk.” She is anything but that. Her music is bathed in melodies and hooks that are actually quite sweet, a counterpoint to her trenchant lyrics.
There was talk of her late comrades, Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Shepard. There was a 200th birthday reading of a Beaudelaire poem, “Be Drunk.” There were the hits, from 1978, “Because the Night” and “Dancing Barefoot,” rendered in a stripped down fashion, more recent songs that should be classics, like “Grateful” and “April Fool.” There were also a couple of covers that should be recorded: Stevie Wonder’s “Blame it on the Sun,” and two by Bob Dylan including “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” and “One Too Many Mornings.”
(And here’s a little scoop: Patti, who famously forgot some Dylan lyrics when she sang a tribute to him for the Nobel Prize, says she’s participating in an 80th birthday salute to Bob next month.)
The show ended with a song dedicated to all the people we’ve lost, called “Ballad of the Southern Cross.” (I swear I had visions of Tom Verlaine.) And then “People Got the Power,” which brought fists raised in the air from the separated tables and a standing ovation. What a way to come back to life after a year in purgatory. (Patti’s daughter, Jesse Paris Smith, joined in on the piano.)
The Patti Smith Trio plays again tonight, Saturday night. If you’re vaccinated and fascinated, go to 16th St. and the West Side Highway and beg the nice people with temperature gizmos to let you in. You will almost feel normal. Then send Clive Davis a thank you note on Facebook for signing Patti Smith in 1975 to Arista Records. (PS They each deserve Kennedy Center Honors.)
PS It was great to see an actual old friend, Lynne Volkman, one of rock and roll’s unsung heroes who worked for Whitney Houston faithfully for her whole career and still toils for her estate. She is the genuine article in rock music. a living legend. Whitney loved her, too. I am happy to say we hugged since we’ve had all our shots.
One last aside: I did forget to mention that the trio played one of my favorite songs, “Peaceable Kingdom.” I’ll add it below.
Paramount is moving “Top Gun: Maverick” to November. It was supposed to open in July. Summer movie releases are falling apart. If Paramount sees that theaters won’t be up to speed, other studios are going to get that message.
If this happens, “Maverick” will go up against the James Bond “No Time to Die.” Each of these films is so old by now they have wrinkles.
But sending “Maverick” to November, resets the Tom Cruise schedule. Now “Mission: Impossible 7” goes to May 2022. Maybe. Who knows?
People are going to the movies in some places. “Godzilla v Kong” has been a monster hit. Disney is going to release “Black Widow.” Paramount could release movies this summer. They still have “A Quiet Place 2” set to unroll on May 28th, Memorial Day (weird, but, wtf).
With “Maverick” going to November with Bond, maybe we’ll see them each in Cannes in October. Stand by.
If I have to ease into live theater, “Blindness” is a great conduit, and an event. At the Daryl Roth Theater, temperature taken, health form complete, viewers file into the cavernous space fitted with lighting fixtures, a neon of color; seats, two together, are distanced. Headsets in place like bunny ears, you are ordered to situate them properly, left ear, right ear, the authoritarian British voice commands, repeat. This is important for a visceral experience based on Jose Saramago’s famed novel, in Simon Stephens’ trim adaptation. Everything depends on sound and light. Sight too, or lack of it.
Much happens in 70 minutes as you sit still, your eyes adjusting to the black space, imagining yourself in a world shut down. (Not a stretch this year.) A voice, Juliet Stevenson’s tells the tale: a man goes blind; the loss of sight spreads to epidemic. The blind quarantine, fight for food, commit rape, murder. One woman, an ophthalmologist’s wife, retains her sight and leads the blind, but where? How quickly civilization falls away, society, what’s left, dystopia? No matter how bad it gets, “Don’t lose yourself,” she whispers in your ear, right, left, repeat.
The stars of this experience are the sound designers Ben and Max Ringham, and the extraordinary lighting designer Jessica Hung Han Yun under the direction of Walter Meierjohann. Simon Stephens, a Tony winner for “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” pared down the Saramago parable, just so much you can take in the dark. Already a success in London prior to the pandemic, the Donmar Warehouse production seems prescient, a reminder of resilience. What a relief when the doors open to natural light, the street outside!
It took a few hours, but Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Foundation has issued a tribute to Harry’s late grandfather Prince Philip.
They took down their website and put up a simple memorial card on their home page.
It reads
In loving memory of
His Royal Highness
The Duke of Edinburgh
1921-2021
Thank you for your service…you will be greatly missed.
Prince Harry will certainly fly to London for the funeral, which will not be public because of COVID restrictions. Poor Philip waited 69 years but he can’t have a glamorous funeral. A sad ending.
Meanwhile, “Fox and Fiends” blamed Phil’s death on Harry and Meghan doing their Oprah interview. That he was 99 years old escaped Kilmeade, Doocy and that woman who sits with them. Crazy.
There should be no tears for Philip. He had quite a life. He lived it on his own terms and had a lot of fun. Best gig in history.
It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen has announced the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
For “Nomadland,” which stars Frances McDormand, the whole billboard thing is a little ironic. A couple of years ago, McDormand won the Oscar for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and so did Sam Rockwell. And that was a movie about the influence of billboards. That was life helping the art it was all about in the first place.
