As expected, Adele has broken the one week sales record with her album “25.” From Friday through today she’s sold more than the 2.4 million copies that NSync moved of “No Strings Attached” back in 1990. And she still has three days left before a new sales week begins on Friday.
More than 500,000 copies of “25” have been sold at Target, which has a special edition of “25” with extra songs.
Two bits of Broadway news this morning:
First, The Tony Awards will be held at the Beacon Theater next spring, instead of Radio City Music Hall. Radio City is booked. The Tonys have moved to the Beacon in the past, and it’s a little intimate and fun. They could have the show now as we already know two of the winners: “Hamilton” will win Best Musical and most of the musical acting awards, plus score. And “A View from the Bridge” is headed to Best Revival of a Play.
Second: Harvey Weinstein is bringing in “Singin’ in the Rain” from its hit run in Paris. An acclaimed version of Stanley Donen’s classic movie musical is playing now to sold out audiences at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Weinstein Live and the Chatelet will produce on Broadway; it’s unclear if they’ll make this Tony season, or wait until next fall. In any case, I’m sure it will be featured on the Tonys. Quite a coup, in any case.
Al Pacino in David Mamet’s “China Doll” still doing amazing business, 95% tickets were sold last week. They had a private opening and party this past week, even though the “official” opening is now December 4th. I love Al Pacino (who doesn’t?) so hoping by the 4th all will be swell.
Lily Tomlin and I are sitting across from the bar in the shabby-chic Marlton Hotel on West 8th Street, and it looks like the sort of place where David Lynch would film a movie with a lot of silences. There are no midgets or teenage marching bands, but the way it’s been decorated—with red leather banquettes and dark lighting in the afternoon—makes us expect something odd to happen.
But the sound that fills the bar, I hear on my tape later, is Lily’s laugh. It’s hearty, and full of fun. No one laughs better than Lily Tomlin. “Do you want something?” I ask her. “Do you want some tea?”
She looks at me as if I’ve suggested we take off in a rocket ship. Her eyes grow wide with delight. Actually, they twinkle.
“Okay,” she says tentatively. “I could do that.”
We are here to discuss Grandma, the Paul Weitz film that caused a sensation in January at the Sundance Film Festival. This isn’t a movie with a Jurassic World budget. Grandma cost just $600,000 and was shot in 19 days. It’s one of the most profitable films ever, earning $6.8 million since it opened in August.
Lily used her own car, a 1955 Dodge Royal Lancer, her own clothes, her own ideas. Her character, Ellie Reed, is an outspoken hippie, a fringe person or what is now considered an “outsider,” just right for Tomlin, with her army of characters.
“She’s my age,” Tomlin says of Ellie, “she’s a feminist, a lesbian. I understood it.”
She understood the role so well that now she’s the most buzzed- about actress queuing up for this year’s Oscar race. She’s on every list of contenders along with Bree Larson, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Winslet, et al. (Academy voters should really watch this DVD this weekend.)
Tomlin has never won an Academy Award. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1975 for her first film, Robert Altman’s Nashville. There have been a string of great performances since then—in The Late Show, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, All of Me, 9 to 5, Short Cuts, and so on—but nothing to bring her back to the realm of Oscar hopeful.
Would she be disappointed if she didn’t get an Oscar nomination this time? “A little bit,” she says. “I hope Sam gets one. He’s so good.” Sam is Sam Elliott, known for westerns and rough- and- tumble films, and the voice of car truck commercials as well being the husband of Katharine Ross. He’s having a little Renaissance himself this year after appearing in “I’ll See You in My Dreams” with Blythe Danner.
Lily says: “I have 7 Emmy awards, I have 2 Tonys and 1 Grammy Award. But no Oscar!”
With an Oscar, she would achieve an EGOT.
“I have two Peabodys. So I’m going to change it and call it PEGOT!”
She also has a Kennedy Center honor, bestowed this past winter. She’s the only member of the cast of the beloved NBC comedy Laugh In—which also produced Oscar winner Goldie Hawn and comic talents like Ruth Buzzi, Henry Gibson, and JoAnn Worley—to receive one.
At the actual Kennedy Center ceremony at the White House, an odd moment was caught on tape. While President Obama is praising Tomlin, in particular her famous 1973 sketch with Richard Pryor called “Juke and Opal,” Tomlin got up and whispered something in the president’s ear. They each laughed.
What did you say to President Obama, I ask Lily?
She gives me a toothy Cheshire cat smile. “I’m not telling you! Nothing.” She laughs. “I was sitting right next to him. I don’t know what I said. You’ll have to get my lips read. It wasn’t very exciting.” Her interruption was pure Lily; you’d think they were old friends. “I was surprised I stood up in an instant. I’d never met him.”
It was Laugh In―produced by George Schlatter and hosted by Dan Rowan and Dick Martin―that turned Lily into a household name overnight in 1969. The show was already two years old. But when Tomlin debuted Ernestine, the fusty, provocative telephone operator with a macramé hair snood, a snort, and great, Rockette-like kicking legs, she became a star. Ernestine’s trademark introduction entered the lexicon: One ringy dingy, two ringy dingys, have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?
The rest, as they say, really was history. When Ernestine hit, Tomlin says she was unprepared. The show was on hiatus. She was on tour with Rowan & Martin doing standup as part of their live variety show.
“Dan was very dignified, Dick was a goofball,” she recalls. “Johnny Brown, who was on Laugh In, was also on the show. We’d each do twenty minutes. Then there was an intermission and a comedy act called Stills and Isles, or Isles and Cavanaugh, or something like that did the second half.”
The Ernestine routine made the crowd sit up and take notice. “Dan and Dick would introduce me, and the crowd would roar.”
In her second season, Tomlin created Edith Ann, the 6-year-old who sat in a humungous rocking chair and dispensed adult wisdom. She uttered her famous tag line was “And that’s the truth” with a raspberry lisp.
“They weren’t going to let me do Edith Ann. They thought she was bratty,” Lily says. “They let her go on and she caught on overnight.” She’d been doing another character, Susie Sorority, an ironic cheerleader. “I traded Susie Sorority for her. I didn’t even have the chair. I wanted George to build me a chair. When they finally built it for me I was so gratified. It’s in my living room now.”
How big is it?
“It’s quite large. You can hike yourself up on the seat if you’re really nimble.”
What color is it? “Well it was yellow. We painted it white to go with our house. It’s to make Edith look like a 6-year-old.”
The “we” includes her partner since 1971, Jane Wagner, the low-key comic genius who’s written or co-written most of Tomlin’s material for the last 45 years, including her hit Broadway show Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. They married in 2012. Wagner is the love of her life.
“Jane Wagner is so adorable. She shies away from the spotlight. It’s so painful because I get credit for everything,” Lily says. But in 2012, the two of them got a special award in Palm Springs. The ceremony can been seen on YouTube, where Wagner makes a rare—and hilarious—appearance. “She’s so funny,” Lily says.
“It brings tears to my eyes that you like her, because I want her to be acknowledged so badly.”
Tomlin says she will write a memoir only if Wagner will do it with her. Lily says: “I thought of having the characters tell my story, like Mrs. Beasley and Tommy Velour. I’d only do it if we could do in an interesting way with Jane writing half the book.” She adds. “My half would be illiterate.”
Her book would also include long friendships with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, her co-stars from 9 to 5, a movie from 1980. The three have rarely been out of touch, but last year Fonda and Tomlin reunited to shoot the hit Netflix comedy Grace and Frankie, which yielded Lily an Emmy nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy.
Lily: “I didn’t like that I got nominated and Jane didn’t. I wasn’t so happy. She was wonderful about it. She’s so insecure about the show. She doesn’t think she’s funny. But I said there’s no Frankie without Grace and no Grace without Frankie.”
Tomlin and Fonda have just finished filming a second season for Netflix, which this year adds the very same Sam Elliott as Fonda’s love interest. Tomlin will not say who hers is, although Ernie Hudson is coming back from Season One. “We think it’s a little better this year,” she says earnestly.
She’d like to do the show, which also stars Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, forever.
“As Jane says,” Lily laughs, “I hope that we do this long enough that we are in diapers!”
At this point, anything is possible. I tell Lily that it’s fairly unusual to have unflagging popularity for 45 years. She’s never been out of fashion.
She jumps in: “Because I’ve never been like―” She struggles to fill in the blank. Tom Cruise? Julia Roberts? “I was never spectacular!”
I say, “Oh yes you were.”
“I was, but not because of a movie. I was never a movie star,” she says, with some satisfaction. “I was always a co-star.”
(PS Thanks to Joan Jedell and Hamptons Sheet magazine, where this was first published in August 2015.)
There’s an embargo until December 4th on reviewing Alejandro Innaritu’s “The Revenant.” The film stars Leonardo Di Caprio, Tom Hardy, and Domhnall Gleason. It’s 156 minutes, and it was screened tonight in New York and then in Hollywood.
I see already social media is buzzing. Will Leo be nominated? Will he win an Oscar at last? Will people make it through the movie?
And who plays the bear?
So I can’t review it except to say the cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (Morgenstern) is absolutely stunning. You could frame half the frames in the film and put them on your wall. The music by Ryuichi Sakamoto et al. is quite wonderful. Everyone is top notch. The movie is rated for gore and sexual violence, and they are not kidding.
Nevertheless, “The Revenant” will be a major factor in the Oscar race. That’s a prediction, not a review. Innaritu just won the Oscar for “Birdman,” remember, so that plays in as a factor too.
More soon, promise.
PS There are no interior shots, no scenes set in restaurants, no one working at a desk. Grooming is at all time low. Everyone needs a comb. The dichotomies of nature’s beauty and danger are the themes.
Leo will be up against a lot of great actors. I would not count out Michael Fassbender as “Steve Jobs” because the movie hasn’t done well at the box office. It’s a great performance. Ditto Matt Damon in “The Martian,” Mark Ruffalo in “Spotlight,” Steve Carell in “The Big Short,” Tom Hanks in “Bridge of Spies,” Michael Caine in “Youth,” and from what I’m hearing, Samuel L. Jackson in “The Hateful Eight.”
Stay tuned…
Carly Simon‘s memoir isn’t really the stuff of tabloids. And the stories in it are from thirty and forty years ago. Still, the romance of Carly and James Taylor, and their marriage, was the stuff of rock and roll legend.
And now we find out more precisely how it all came apart. In “Boys from the Trees,” which is officially published tomorrow, Simon reveals more or less what happened. First of all, it was indeed drugs. But we knew that. Taylor was a drug addict for a long time. The fact that he’s still here, and so healthy, is remarkable. The world would be a colder place without him.
But Taylor was (and is) a rock star. Back during his marriage to Simon, well think Justin Timberlake. Or better yet, John Mayer. (Makes you wonder if we’ll hear the John Mayer stories in 20 years.) When rock stars are hot, fidelity is not hi.
The real cause of the breakup of the Simon-Taylor marriage was his cheating. He cheated with a back up singer, whom Carly acknowledges but doesn’t name. (I know the name but what’s the point now?)
Taylor had a mistress named Evey (not sure if that’s her real name). He lodged her in a studio apartment he kept for practicing, and rehearsing on the Upper West Side. He was still living at home just a few blocks away with Simon and their two small children. The marriage was already estranged to the point where Carly was seeing someone (Scott Litt, who went on to produce REM’s hit albums including the song “Losing My Religion”).
What ensues his sad and hilarious at the same time when Carly leaves James with the kids — he was unaware– and decides to confront Evey. (She’d had a local locksmith make her a set of keys.)
She writes: “Why was I planning to face down my husband’s mistress in their West Seventieth
Street love nest? Because I wanted Evey to see that I was not a
character in a story James was telling her, not some phantom abstraction,
but a real person, and a nice person, too. I wanted her to respect James’s
and my marriage, our children, our life together.”
The scene in the apartment is priceless, as Evey tells Simon all the things Taylor has made up about her to justify the affair. Simon winds up in the bathroom and then can’t figure a way to exit the whole ordeal.
At last Evey spoke, her voice deliberate. “Jamie and I have the same trines in our charts. We dig each other. You don’t get him.”
The whole thing, you must read. (You can’t put it down.) A heartbreaking end to what the public saw as a fairy tale marriage.
PS Apparently the audio version of Carly’s book — which she reads– is scored with all new music. Can’t wait to hear it!
EXCLUSIVE Did you know that everyone’s favorite person, Julie Andrews, now co-owns the rights to stage “My Fair Lady”?
Julie made her name as Eliza Doolittle on stage in the original “My Fair Lady.” As the story goes, Andrews was replaced by Audrey Hepburn for the famous movie, but then shot to superstardom in “Mary Poppins.”
So Julie, who’s 80, is going to direct “My Fair Lady” at the Sydney Opera House next year. Then her production will go on the road in two routes, with different casts, through Australia and maybe to Europe.
But I’m told when the show hits New York in 2017, its stars are likely to be Kelsey Grammer as Henry Higgins and Kelli O’Hara as Eliza. The pair played the roles for one night only in 2007 at a Lincoln Center fundraiser. Each actor has long expressed wishes to play those roles officially. And I’m told Mary Poppins herself is going to make it happen.
Kelli is currently the Tony winner of “The King and I” at Lincoln Center. Grammer is returning to “Finding Neverland” soon to reprise his roles as Capt Hook and Charles Frohman. He opened the musical last winter, but left soon after to spend time with his family.
Just another Sunday night in Gotham as Adam McKay’s Oscar heavy “The Big Short” landed in New York with a private screening at MoMA followed by a swanky dinner at the Monkey Bar.
Among the guests were hosts Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels, along with cast members Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Jeremy Strong, Finn Wittrock, John Magaro, Byron Mann, and Hamish Linklater (with girlfriend, and, ahem, super actress Lily Rabe). Author Michael Lewis, who wrote the book upon which the was based, was there along with screenwriter Charles Randolph and director Adam McKay (who made one of my favorite films, “The Other Guys.”)
Other stars? Yep. Sir Paul McCartney and wife Nancy showed up for the MoMA part of the night, along with Bob Balaban, Mamie Gummer, David Tennant (the actor who plays “Dr. Who”).
You know Paramount is serious when studio chief Brad Grey comes to town. “The Big Short” is their Oscar entry, and it’s a doozy. This is almost a companion piece to “The Wolf of Wall Street,” except this story of finance and greed is more current– McKay and co. wittily detail the bank bailout and stock market disaster that brought the 2008 recession. Brad Pitt’s Plan B produced, and Brad makes an extended cameo half way through the film that absolves him for any cinematic indulgences this year.
Steve Carell leads the cast (and may well reap an Oscar nomination) with the outstanding Christian Bale, the terrific Gosling and a superior ensemble (my old friend Al Sapienza even puts in an appearance) cast. Marisa Tomei and Melissa Leo– two Oscar winners– pull the weight on the female side.
There are also surprise appearances from some unlikely people playing themselves including Selena Gomez, Anthony Bourdain, and a very sexy Margot Robbie in a bathtub.
At the Monkey Bar party, former “Law & Order” actress Carey Lowell (and former Mrs. Richard Gere, and Griffin Dunne) came with media honcho Tom Freston. Ryan Gosling and I chatted about his adorable 14 month old daughter Esmeralda. Steve Carell marveled at being the lead in yet another serious film (he was so memorable in “Foxcatcher”). Lorne Michaels accepted kudos on his “Adele Week.” Gummer invited us all to come see her in a much praised limited run play called “Ugly Lies the Bone.” Linklater and Rabe — NY theater stars– were excited to meet Mark Strong, currently starring on Broadway in “A View from the Bridge.”
Gosling, by the way, hosts “SNL” next weekend with Leon Bridges as musical guest.
Brad Pitt hits town Monday night for the movie’s real premiere at the Ziegfeld followed by an old fashioned gala in mid town. He and his Plan B team are on a roll– they made “12 Years a Slave”–since “The Big Short” is about to make a big noise.
“The Hunger Games–Mockingjay Part 2” opened to a series low this weekend with $101 million. This is down 36% from the original film. It’s also way off from the numbers that were being suggested last week by LionsGate– up to $134 million.
What happened? Hubris. This film had good reviews. But there was little interest left in this enterprise to start with. The studio just left it up to the fans, and the fans were ambivalent. Still, LionsGate makes money from the whole thing. It’s just that they end on a down note.
For Jennifer Lawrence, it was a great pay day. And now she comes with David O. Russell’s “Joy,” which looks very very promising for Oscar season.
On Friday, Lions Gate stock ended down $1.20 or 3.31% at $35.02. That’s not too bad off its high for the last year, but we’ll see how it does on Monday based on this information.
Elsewhere, Oscar certain “Spotlight” and “Carol” each did very well over the weekend. Brad and Angelina’s “By the Sea” is now at $312,597 total.
DOA: “The Secret in their Eyes” starring Julia Roberts, with Nicole Kidman. It made $6,633,000 in wide release. DOA, VOD, etc. I could really get into a whole megillah about this, but why bother? It’s over.
This was Adele week for Lorne Michaels. First he produced her Radio City Music Hall show on Tuesday, a great success. It will air December 14th on NBC. Then last night Adele gave 2 great performances on “Saturday Night Live.” She sang both “Hello” and the song I think is the break out hit from 25, “When We Were Young.” Here’s the latter:
When We Were Young
Ton Cruise read Spanish off a Teleprompter and opened the Madrid Scientology center in 2004. Someone just posted this to YouTube. Wow. You see, no amount of shame, books, revelations, exposes, can stop him. Tom is deep inside the organization.
The indefatigable Tony Ortega translated. Poor Spain. They don’t need this crap. I hope they can ignore it.