Wanda Sykes. The gifted writer-comedian has been a producer on the Roseanne reboot. She joins executive producer Whitney Cummings in exiting the show. Bruce Helford should be next. Even in Hollywood no amount of money is worth supporting Roseanne Barr’s dismal behavior. Norm McDonald, are you still there?
I will not be returning to @RoseanneOnABC.
— Wanda Sykes (@iamwandasykes) May 29, 2018
I always thought maybe Roseanne Barr had something wrong with her mentally. Today in addition to an unforgivable Tweet about Valerie Jarrett, she calls philanthropist George Soros ‘a nazi’ and accuses him of turning in Jews in German concentration camps and stealing their money.
Roseanne Barr is a vicious, destructive person. She’s an unmitigated liar who takes conspiracy theorist stories from nuts on the internet and regurgitates them to her followers. This is why Roseanne sold NO tickets to her cancelled show in Maryland this month. People on the East Coast are horrified by her.
Let’s boycott Roseanne’s show and get ABC to cancel it. She’s gone too far today. She’s disgusting.
Sara Gilbert, what say you?
Sorry to have tweeted incorrect info about you!I Please forgive me! By the way, George Soros is a nazi who turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered in German concentration camps & stole their wealth-were you aware of that? But, we all make mistakes, right Chelsea?
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 29, 2018
WITH SPOILERS
DON’T READ MORE IF YOU’RE INVESTED IN THE SHOW’S PLOT LINE
Last night’s premiere of “The Bachelorette” got very low ratings, the lowest ever in the franchise history– not quite 6 million viewers tuned in to see Becca, from the last season of “The Bachelor”– entertain 28 morons.
The worst part is that Reality Steve, the infamous blogger, and TMZ, have each revealed the man to whom Becca becomes engaged on the final episode, weeks from now.
Oh wait, that’s not the worst part. It turns out this guy, named Garrett, has mocked feminists, as well as the Parkland survivors on his Instagram account. The account has since been removed, but of course not before it was copied by a number of people on the web including a former “Bachelor” female contestant.
On top of that, I can tell you the original Instagram account belonging to Garrett promoted a gun store that sold semi-automatic rifles.
Earlier last night, when I saw Garrett’s entrance, I Tweeted that he was creepy. He pulled up to “The Bachelor” house in a minivan stocked with “family” things to convince Becca he was serious about marriage and children. The whole thing was right out of the Julia Roberts movie “Sleeping with the Enemy.”
It’s enough already. The game Roseanne Barr has been playing has finally come to a tipping point.
Her Tweet overnight that former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, who is African American, was the child of “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes” would be enough to get anyone in this country fired immediately from their job.
Now Roseanne’s employer, Disney, and its chief, Bob Iger, must make a statement. Also her fellow actors Laurie Metcalf, John Goodman, and Sara Gilbert must say something.
For the last few months, the contention has been that Roseanne represented Trump’s America, and that she had the right to voice those issues on her TV show. But this last Tweet, which prompted a weak apology and her leaving of Twitter, is shocking and can’t go without some kind of remark.
Do these people– Iger, et al– approve of this behavior? I doubt it. It’s time they said something.
THIS AFTERNOON:
CNN responded to Freeman with this statement:
“The unfounded accusations made by Mr. Freeman’s lawyer are disappointing and are difficult to reconcile with Mr. Freeman’s own public statements in the aftermath of the story. CNN stands by its reporting and will respond forcefully to any attempt by Mr. Freeman or his representatives to intimidate us from covering this important public issue.”
After CNN objected to Schwartz’s letter, Schwartz issued this comment:
UPDATE:
“We presented CNN with objective evidence, including videotapes and on-the-record denials by the claimed “victims,” that the alleged incident that gave rise to the story never happened. We proved to CNN, beyond any doubt, that the whole story was built on fakery. The credibility of the entire CNN attack on Mr. Freeman has now been undermined. And in choosing to ignore all of the evidence that we presented, CNN has confirmed our concerns about its reporters, its lack of oversight, and its gross misconduct in unjustifiably attacking Mr. Freeman.”
THIS MORNING: Hollywood lawyer Robert Schwartz has sent a ten page letter to CNN’s Jeff Zucker demanding a retraction and apology for the network’s story about Oscar winner Morgan Freeman regarding sexual misconduct and harassment.
The story was CNN’s Chloe Melas and comes on the heels of the #MeToo movement and accusations against powerful men in Hollywood.
Schwartz’s letter questions Melas’s reporting.
The lawyer’s letter says:…
“at just this early stage, our review confirms that:
• Of the three people CNN identified as being a “victim,” the first, CNN’s own Chloe Melas, had no reasonable basis to have interpreted what Mr. Freeman said or did at the Going In Style interview last year as having been directed at her or as any form of harassment. The videotape confirms that his statement had nothing to do with her and was not harassing. And an independent third party, the Warner Bros. Human Resources Department, investigated her claim and concluded that it was not supported by the facts.
• The second person CNN identified, Tyra Martin, has gone on record twice since CNN published the article to state that CNN misrepresented what she said to CNN and that Mr. Freeman did not harass her • The third person CNN identified, Lori McCreary, told CNN that Mr. Freeman never harassed her. And as to CNN’s gratuitous sideswipe at Ms. McCreary herself, yet another independent party investigated the claim when CNN raised it, and found it to be meritless.
• Ms. Melas baited and prodded supposed “witnesses” to say bad things about Mr. Freeman and tried to get them to confirm her bias against him. Thus, no reader of the article can have any confidence that any of the anonymous sources, which make up the balance of CNN’s article, can be relied upon at all.
Based on those facts, and the additional information presented below, it is clear that CNN has defamed Mr. Freeman. CNN has inflicted serious injury on his reputation and career. At a minimum, CNN immediately needs to issue a retraction and apologize to Mr. Freeman through the same channels, and with the same level of attention, that it used to unjustly attack him on May 24. CNN also needs to retract the portions of the story that concern Lori McCreary and apologize to her for defaming and injuring her.”
I apologize. I am now leaving Twitter.
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 29, 2018
I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me-my joke was in bad taste.
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 29, 2018
Roseanne Barr can’t shock much more, but this morning she may have gone over the line.
In a series of racist, right wing rants on Twitter she attacked Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, Chelsea Clinton, and George Soros.
The worse of the Tweets concerned Jarrett, who is African American. Barr wrote:
muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 29, 2018
The Tweet came from her authorized account on Twitter, although now it cannot be found. Regardless, this certainly seems to be authored by Barr. So that would raise questions to ABC, to Carsey Werner Productions, to her cast, crew and production staff. The Tweet is clearly repulsive, reprehensible and grounds for cancellation of her show.
In Barr’s other set of Tweets, she attacked Chelsea Clinton for being married to someone related to George Soros. Clinton responded by saying her middle name was “Victoria.” Roseanne responded by apologizing, and inaccurately posting:
CORRECTION: CHELSEA CLINTON IS NOT MARRIED TO A SOROS NEPHEW. HER HUSBAND IS THE SON OF A CORRUPT SENATOR, SO SORRY!:
In fact, Marc Mezvinsky’s father was a congressman who pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
The fact is, Roseanne is a fraud. And ABC will have to address this. Soon.
Once, ABC Daytime was a mighty division. They had five or six soaps, plus “The View.”
Today, it’s down to one show, “General Hospital.” And that’s not good news.
Three and half years ago, “The View” was moved to ABC News. A few years earlier, “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” were replaced by “The Chew,” “The Revolution,” and “Katie Couric.”
All of those are now history.
A lot of people blame the former head of ABC Daytime, Brian Frons. But he carried out Disney’s orders, which was to get rid of everything.
Now “General Hospital” teeters on the brink of extinction. After falling to 4th place out of 4 soaps two weeks ago, the show made slight rebound to 3rd place for the week of May 7th to the 11th. But the total viewership, at 2.290 million, is down at least 400,000 viewers.
During the winter the soap dumped long time favorite Genie Francis. Then, on the 55th anniversary on April 1st, another four decade favorite, Kin Shriner, said goodbye. It was clear he’d also been dropped.
The networks learned long ago that the way to cancel a soap was to jettison favorite actors. Irate fans boycotted the shows, which is what the networks wanted. The ratings dropped, and the nets had an excuse to cancel the shows.
Such may be the case with ABC. Slotting in an hour of news billed as “Good Morning America” in the afternoon, they’ll replace “The Chew.” This was tried before and failed. But if they can make it work this time, ABC News will gun for another hour, and wipe out “General Hospital.”
It will be up to the producers and writers of “GH” now to give the viewers what they want, and damn the network. At least they’ll go out fighting. At CBS and NBC, the producers just did what they were told and carried out their suicide missions.
The worst case was on “Guiding Light,” where the network and the owner, Procter & Gamble, forced the show out of their sets to shoot in a real neighborhood in New Jersey. It was a sad ending. If ABC makes “GH” shoot at Cedars Sinai during slow hours in the ER, we’ll know the party is over.
By the way, the former ABC Daytime webpage now comes up with a logo and cast photo for the show “Lost”– as in you’re lost because ABC Daytime no longer exists.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” has scored the lowest opening weekend of any “Star Wars” movie with $103 million over four days.
Now that we’ve gotten that of our systems, life goes on. The next step for Disney-LucasFilms is how to approach the sequels.
And there will be sequels. “Solo” ends with a potent cliffhanger featuring a long forgotten villain. That will not go unresolved.
At the “Solo” premiere in Cannes, I was assured by a number of insiders the sequels will be coming.
Clearly, Ron Howard won’t be back to direct “Solo 2.” He’s got other things to do. Howard only stepped into this to help out LucasFilms when they wanted to replace the two original directors.
So now LucasFilms will be talking to a lot of directors and writers about how to build on what was good, and go forward from here. With THAT VILLAIN certainly to be majorly in the mix, “Solo 2” will have to focus on how to incorporate better special effects, a tighter story, a love story, and so on.
But never count out “Star Wars.” The sagas will continue in many directions. LucasFilms will learn from its mistakes.
There’s only one Clive Davis, and he knows how to kick off Memorial Day weekend.
On Saturday night in upstate New York, Davis–the famed music exec and impresario–welcomed about 50 friends to his cozy estate for a gourmet dinner and a surprise entertainment.
Among the guests were some really big names in the music world including Judy Collins, Rob Thomas of matchbox twenty, famed songwriter Valerie Simpson ( of Ashford & Simpson), and producer/writer/performer David Foster.
They were joined by no less than Regis and Joy Philbin, Brenda Vaccaro, “Precious” and “Empire” priducer director Lee Daniels, Broadway legend Tommy Tune, basketball great Isiah Thomas, Monte Lippman (he’s the founder of Republic Records, as in Post Malone, Arianna Grande), Broadway producers Fran and Barry Weissler, new radio star of WOR Michael Riedel, interior designer Ron Marshall, realtor to the stars Beth Chase, and my two favorite ladies: the inimitable Nikki Haskell and her BFF Ivana Trump.
Yes, the Ivana Trump. Don’t worry. I asked her. She knows nothing. Did she ever know Michael Cohen? “No,” she said, “he came after me.” What about everything else, I wondered? Ivana, smart and funny, replied: “Better them than me.” LOL.
Dinner was catered by Abigail Kirsch, which is like the top, kids. That’s it.
During dinner, guests were given a spoiler alert about the film they were about to see: Clive personally curated 60 minutes of his all time favorite live performances, culled from You Tube. This turned out to be quite a treat as the featured artists included the creme de la creme: Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, the Beatles, Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Bruce Springsteen with Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson.
The clips were not pedestrian choices, but so well curated that many had not been seen in years if at all. The assembled guests were mesmerized, and Brenda Vaccaro– who knew Sinatra– pretty much swooned during the Chairman of the Board killing it on “My Way.” When Aretha finished “Natural Woman” from the Kennedy Center, Valerie Simpson said: “Tell her how we went crazy when it was over!” Michael Jackson’s famous Moonwalking from “Motown 25” was more electric than ever.
But the final clip– Whitney Houston performing a medley from the American Music Awards– was the stunner. With all respect to both Jennifer Holliday and Jennifer Hudson, Whitney just tears it up on “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going.”
Lucky for Clive, at the end of the night, reluctantly, everyone told him they were going– home. But boy, what a way to start the summer!
PS It’s always wonderful to see Regis and Joy, neither of whom ages. They are the most fun ever. God bless them. They told me their daughter, J.J., my intern at New York magazine years ago, has a show coming on ABC this fall called “Single Parents” starring Brad Garrett. J.J. is not a single parent, however. She has two kids with writer-producer-actor Michael Schur, of “The Office” and “The Good Place” fame.
UPDATE “Solo” made just $83 million for the three day weekend. It may just break $101 million through Monday night. That’s the lowest for any “Star Wars” movie. Was it the movie or the marketing? There are going to be arguments that this shouldn’t have been billed as a “Star Wars” movie. No lightsabres, no cry.
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It doesn’t matter if you liked “Solo: A Star Wars Story” or wanted to see it. This movie will be destroyed one way or another by forces bigger than the Empire– naysayers and lurkers, commenters who are happy to see a catastrophe.
And so “Solo” looks like it will lose the weekend to “Deadpool 2.” This is Disney’s dilemma, as both movies belong to them. After back to back blockbusters with “Black Panther” and “Infinity War,” the company that rules the commercial universe is having a rocky Memorial Day weekend.
Wait for the update…so far all the other box office numbers are in this morning except for “Solo.”