Sean Penn does a lot of things very well: act, direct, help Haiti. But writing fiction may not fall in that category. He launched his first novel, “Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff,” on Colbert last night. He told the host he was still feeling the Ambien he’d taken on his overnight flight, and then he started smoking. Penn was pretty cogent, however (he’s very articulate). Alas, Colbert didn’t seem to care much for the book. Reviews are coming in now and they’re not too good. Neither are sales. “Bob Honey” is at number 174 on amazon. Maybe people will buy it as a collector’s item. Too bad Sean didn’t write a serious novel about his work in Haiti, etc. Now that this is out of his system, that would be an interesting real second novel.
Box Office Bonanza: “Black Panther” Will End Up Third or Fourth Biggest Movie of All Time
Now the story gets really interesting…
“Black Panther” is now the fifth biggest movie of all time on the domestic box office list. This week it passed “The Avengers” and “The Last Jedi,” with a total of $631 million.
But what happens next is even better. “Black Panther” should move into the number 4 spot next week, when it overcomes “Jurassic World.” There’s only a $20 million difference, and the kids from Wakanda have been making around $19 million a week even after six weeks of release.
To hit number 3, “BP” has to get to $660 million. That’s when it knocks out “Titanic.” Can it happen? Sure, why not? “Infinity War,” the new “Avengers” movie, may actually drive theater traffic back to “Panther.” That would be a month away.
If “Panther” hits number 3, that’s where it will stop. “Avatar” is pretty settled in at number 2 with $760 million. And “The Force Awakens” stands at number 1 with $932 million.
How times have changed: Steven Spielberg used to rule the top 10. Now his biggest movie, “E.T.,” is number 17. “Jurassic Park” is number 27. Of course, his grandchild, “Jurassic World,” is number 4.
Mini Studio A24 Partner Leaves as “Lady Bird,” “Disaster Artist” Et Al Get Kudos, Earn Less Than Thought
Original partner John Hodges is abruptly leaving mini-studio A24 after starting it in 2012 with David Fenkel and Daniel Katz. The departure was the talk of the town yesterday because in 2017 A24 won the Oscar with “Moonlight.” This past year, they gave us prestige films like “Lady Bird,” “The Disaster Artist,” and “The Florida Project.”
A24 wants to be the new Miramax, except without the sexual harassment stuff. But the old Miramax was owned by Disney, which poured $750 million a year into the coffers so Harvey and Bob Weinstein could put their good taste (in films) to good use. A24 has financing, but it doesn’t have those deep pockets. And it showed this past Oscar season.
“Lady Bird” made $49 million and became their highest grossing film. But A24’s total for 15 films released in 2017 was $102.3 million. So most of that was from “Lady Bird.” Their second highest grossing film was James Franco’s “The Disaster Artist,” which was nipped in the bud at $21 million just as award season took off. The only other A24 entry to make more than $6 million was a horror film, “It Comes at Night.”
After that it was all downhill. “The Florida Project,” which should have done better, eked out $5.9 million. Like all the A24 films, it picked up nominations but no wins for Oscars or Golden Globes. Most people have never heard of “The Florida Project,” which is a shame since it was so very good. A24’s fifth biggest movie was “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” There was buzz from Telluride, the film vanished in Toronto and was never heard about again. The total: $2.3 million. And adios.
Of the 10 remaining films, one– “Good Time”– also picked up early festival buzz for Robert Pattinson, then sank like a stone. Remember when all the prognosticators said it was Pattinson’s year? Uh huh.
Will A24 be sold? That’s the big question now. Everyone’s rooting for a clutch of films coming shortly: Adam Rifkin’s “Last Movie Star” with Burt Reynolds, plus “Under the Silver Lake,” “Lean on Pete,” “Hereditary,” “How to Talk to Girls at Parties.” One of them must break out big time. Two of them– and well, uncork the Champagne!
“Billions” is Back on Showtime for 3rd Season Without a Single Emmy or Golden Globe Nomination — So Far
“Billions” returned on Showtime for its third season on Sunday night. I don’t know if the ratings were good or bad yet, and it almost doesn’t matter. I love it. A lot of people love it.
The first episode “Tie Goes to the Runner,” brought back the whole wonderful cast caught up in Wall Street, corporate and government intrigue.
But one thing is missing: awards. For some reason, “Billions” has not scored one Emmy or Golden Globe nomination and obviously, no wins.
In a perfect world, Paul Giamatti and Damien Lewis would each be nominated for Best Actor in a Drama. Maggie Siff and Malin Akerman would be nominated at least in Best Supporting Actress. Asia Kate Dillon would have run away with a Best Supporting Actor or Actress nomination (she/he is non binary). David Costabile would be up for Best Supporting Actor, so would Jeffrey DeMunn. The show itself would be up for Best Drama, with writing and directing nominations.
Really– how is it possible that two seasons have blown by without one crumb? If HBO produced “Billions,” well, please…
Maybe this year things will change. The show looks stronger than ever. (I’ve seen five episodes, they’re all great.) Jerry O’Connell has been added. among other things. But something is wrong in awards world. Let’s hope that changes this time around.
Broadway: Captain America, aka Chris Evans, Hasn’t Helped “Lobby Hero” Ticket Sales Even with a Solid Production
Kenneth Lonergan’s “Lobby Hero” opens tonight on Broadway with two movie stars in the lead roles: Michael Cera, known for comedies like “Superbad” and “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”– and Chris Evans, Captain America from the “Avengers” Marvel movies.
They are each very appealing in the first Broadway production of “Lobby Hero,” but it turns they’re not selling tickets with any super powers. Even though “Lobby Hero” is in the smallest theater you can find on Broadway– the Helen Hayes, now known as the Hayes in case the word Helen is too daunting for millenials–the play did only 52% of its capacity last week. The gross was $333,114– down by $50,000 from the prior week. (Even if you factor in press seats, “Lobby Hero” wasn’t drawing from the previous week either.)
Maybe reviews will help when it opens tonight. Lonergan wrote and directed the excellent “Manchester by the Sea” last year, earning several Oscar nods including Best Actor for Casey Affleck. “Lobby Hero” is from 1999, and has had many productions over the last two decades including one notably off Broadway. This is its Broadway debut, with Cera as Jeff, the slacker security guard in a sort of pedestrian Manhattan building. Brian Tyree-Henry is William, his captain and boss, whose brother has just been arrested in a gang rape and murder.
Enter into this Evans, as a swaggering NYC beat cop named Bill who’s sleeping with a high end prostitute in William and Jeff’s building. Bel Powley, known for “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” is Dawn, the rookie cop assigned to Bill. She’s already slept with him, it’s revealed, and he’s treating her like dirt. In what now seems prescient from 1999, she’s a victim of on the job sexual harassment and, as she notes, rape if she says no to Bill’s advances.
In short order the two stories– of Dawn’s plight and William’s brother’s arrest– dovetail. As they’re hashed out, only Dawn goes through a learning curve. The three guys remain mostly the same throughout. Cera is very comfortable on stage– he’s appeared in other Lonergan productions– and is very winning. Tyree-Henry is a find, providing real gravity as the only character in true conflict. Powley proves winning, finding her way from naif to realist.
Chris Evans is fine. He’s very charismatic although sometimes he seemed like he was in the old “SNL” bit about “Da Bears.” Neither his accent nor Powley’s sounded like they were from New York; I thought for a few minutes that the play was set in Chicago. Evans is not Andrew Garfield, but he’s got presence and– considering he’s a super hero by day– a nice menacing quality that’s unexpected.
For Tony Awards, “Lobby Hero” may go into competition with “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and “Farinelli and the King” for Best Play, but it’s an uphill battle. “Cursed Child” is a spectacle, “Farinelli” is the arty favorite thanks to Mark Rylance. “Lobby Hero” benefits from basic sound construction considering that it’s Lonergan circa 1999. There were and are better plays and movies ahead.
New Idol? “60 Minutes” Blockbuster as Stormy Daniels Interview Scores Three Times as Many Viewers as “American Idol”
Donald Trump won’t like this, but people paid attention to Stormy Daniels last night like crazy. They watched in droves as Anderson Cooper interviewed her on “60 Minutes” about having sex with the multi millionaire businessman back in 2006 while his third wife, Melania, was pregnant with his fifth child, Barron.
From 7:30 to 8pm, after NCAA Basketball, “60 Minutes” scored 23.5 million viewers. In the second half hour, after Stormy had rained on Trump’s parade, the number went down to 19 million. By comparison, a really good average “60 Minutes” episode usually brings in 10 million viewers.
During the overlapping last half hour, on ABC, “American Idol” scored just 7 million fans. That number did increase to 7.7 million. But really, Stormy was the American Idol last night– she was poised, succinct, truthful. Nothing about her said porn star (except for her enlarged chest, but even that seemed conservative last night).
The show also offered an expert take from the former Federal Election commissioner regarding Stormy’s payoff of $130,000 by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen could be in hot water legally as the money is considered a campaign contribution. It would be swell to see him punished for that.
Meanwhile, Cohen’s office immediately issued a statement after the show ran denying that Stormy was ever threatened by a “goon” who told her to keep quiet about the whole thing. Stormy says she could pick the guy out if she ever saw him again. Cohen better have him stashed away somewhere in Fiji.
Will it matter to Trump voters? Probably not. The men will all think, good for you, regarding their evil leader. Maybe the women who voted for Trump will think twice. But then again, nothing else has shaken their belief in this dodo.
Broadway: “Angels in America” Revival is So Good Now You See That it Was Always a Masterpiece
You watch “Angels in America” at the Neil Simon Theater and think– Pulitzer, Nobel, Tony Award who cares? You see now with this revival directed by Marianne Elliott and starring Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane that Tony Kushner painted his “Guernica.” Well, let’s say he also painted his “Rape of the Sabines” because “Angels” is two plays, so it’s two masterpieces.
Did I like it? “Angels in America” is well beyond liking.
And that’s because a play that premiered in and is set in 1985-86 turns out to be so much more prescient than I recalled or maybe almost anyone in an opening day audience that included Glenn Close (who does the voice overs), Joel Grey, Diane Sawyer, Lea DeLaria, Anna Chlumsky, Oscar winners Frances McDormand and Lupita Nyong’o (separately), Billy Eichner, stage legend Dana Ivey, TV presence extraordinaire Ru Paul and a variety of Broadway producers and tastemakers from the top of the A list.
“Angels” is two plays, as you may know, each over three hours long (with several breaks), directed by George C. Wolfe in 1994. The plays were made into an award winning mini series on HBO by Mike Nichols. The two plays– “Millennium Approaches” and “Perestroika” separately and together are the equivalent of masterful spoken word operas, with interlocking plots, politics, tremendously funny laughs, and deep sorrow all woven together. Now more than ever you see the grandeur of it all, and can only marvel at it. You watch these plays the way you see the pyramids in Egypt and wonder How the heck was this put together? Amazing.
And it’s all the more astonishing because Kushner took on the AIDS epidemic not as a polemic but a saga with characters very richly drawn. He added to those characters Roy Cohn, a real life person who was evil incarnate to Begin with — he sent the Rosenbergs to their deaths, destroyed innocent lives with the Black listing of the 1950s, ruined careers– then denied his own homosexuality as he lay dying from AIDS. He was Richard Nixon’s close cohort, Barbara Walters’s best friend (he was her beard for eons), and was ultimately disbarred on his death bed for stealing from widows.
Time has moved on, a lot of people don’t know about Roy Cohn. A woman waiting for her car with me after the show said she’d never heard of him. She was absolutely my age. So this story has to be told, and Kushner’s genius was not only to put Cohn at the center of the hypocrisy about AIDS but then also to have him hallucinate about Ethel Rosenberg (Al Pacino and Meryl Streep won Emmys playing them in the HBO movie). Roy Cohn was also Donald Trump’s mentor. And this is is key here considering where we were when the play debuted in 1994. Trump is not in the play but his presence now looms over the proceedings like a dark cloud. The anger, the hate, the dismissive behavior– it’s all there. It’s as if Cohn laid out the pattern like a tailor.
Garfield and Lane are the only names in this production, but I’ll tell you– by the time you’re done with three or six hours, this cast are all stars. Lane is Cohn, and we know him, he’s hilarious from “The Producers” and “It’s Only a Play” but really Nathan Lane’s turn as Roy Cohn is something from the beyond. Tony Award? Without a doubt. Lane is so wrenching as this monster (who’s hilarious– and there’s an early inside joke about “La Cage Aux Folles”– remember Nathan starred in the movie version “The Birdcage”–by the denouement of “Perestroika” you are thinking about death in new and disturbing ways. He reaches right into the gut of every single audience member.
Garfield as Prior Walter is the revelation. Even though he won the Olivier Award in London, New York audiences will be lining up around the block to see this extraordinary performance. What Garfield (a movie actor to us with “Hacksaw Ridge” and “Silence”) does here is what establishes an actor forever. He carries the six hours as Pryor Walter becomes infected with the AIDS virus and his world is turned upside down. Garfield is utterly absorbed into this role to the point where you almost can’t imagine anyone else playing it. He’s outrageous, serious, broad, and intense– what a roller coaster.
Ironically, Garfield will be up against Mark Rylance for the Tony (“Farinelli and the King”), whom Garfield reveres. Rylance should be flattered the student will best the teacher this time around. Garfield rises to that high level with this epic.
Every other member of the cast is perfection: James McArdle as Louis, Pryor’s cowardly intellectual partner; Lee Pace as Joe Pitt, the closeted Republican Mormon lawyer; Amanda Lawrence in several roles including Ethel Rosenberg; Denise Gough as Joe’s wife; Susan Brown as his mother; and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Belize, Pryor’s friend, confidante and nurse.
Kudos to everyone from Elliott– who keeps everyone moving on these phenomenal spare sets– to the entire production. Exhausting! Where you do the two plays in one day as we did today or separate them you can’t do anything but marvel at these people. And most of all Tony Kushner. I don’t care if he never writes anything again. His achievement is ever lasting.
One final note: “Angels in America” is far from depressing. It’s actually a celebration of life. It’s very moving in the least sentimental ways and hilarious in all the best ones.
Music’s Happiest Birthday: Aretha Franklin and Elton John Share this Auspicious Day
Today must be the happiest day of the year in music. Aretha Franklin turns 76 and Elton John is 71. They’re two of our greatest legends. Bravo!
Metallica Follows Bon Jovi, Other Groups to Number 1 on Charts with Old Albums Sold in Concert Ticket Bundles
A couple of weeks ago I noted that Bon Jovi’s “This House is Not For Sale” had suddenly jumped to number 1 on the album charts. Despite being a couple years old, “This House” sold 130,000 copies out of nowhere, hit the top and then fell right off the charts again.
This week, Metallica’s 2016 album, “Hardwired…to Self-Destruct” is the number 1 selling physical album. The chart says Metallica sold around 65,000 copies and jumped from number 42 to number 1. Amazing!
Well, not so much. These chart toppers, as well as others in the recent past (Pink, for example) should all have asterisks next to their names in the record books. The CDs and downloads sold came as part of a bundle with concert tickets for the acts.
Metallica is selling tickets right now for Europe. And with every ticket sale comes a CD or download for free. So “Hardwired” is actually trip-wired.
Madonna and Prince each tried this years ago. More recently, with business struggling, the chart keepers have been persuaded to count these albums as sales. But they’re not, are they? They’re like the Thursday night box office previews that get counted into the Friday opening numbers for movies. They aren’t real.
But hey– congrats to Metallica. You can say you had the “number 1” album of the week.
Paul McCartney’s Poignant Reminder at NYC March: “One of My Best Friends Was Killed in Gun Violence”
The clip from CNN is 26 seconds but it crystallizes the whole March for our Lives today. Paul McCartney on Central Park West tells the CNN reporter “One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here so it’s important to me.”
McCartney is of course referring to the murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980 in front of the Dakota apartment house by Mark David Chapman. That’s almost 38 years ago, it’s one of the most chilling examples of a mentally ill person who was able to secure a gun.
Paul and wife Nancy wore matching t shirts that read “We Can End Gun Violence.”
Paul was never the anti-anything marcher in the 60s. It was all John and Yoko. But this was an incredible grace note for him, and moved the message in new ways. I’m sure Yoko, just a few blocks away, must have appreciated the gesture.