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Michael Jackson Ripped Off in Death (Again)

Roger Friedman
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Some people have no shame.

Now the Michael Jackson estate has filed suit in Los Angeles against a bunch of people who’ve hijacked Michael’s old Heal the World Foundation. They’re passing it off as their own and claiming Michael is their president emeritus.

This is too much. The real Heal the World was shut down several years ago. Nevertheless, two people who had nothing to do with Michael Jackson ‘ Melissa Johnson and Mel Wilson ‘ decided to reactivate the name, apply for a bunch of trademarks, and carry on as if Michael were running the show from the grave. He is not. This new Heal the World Foundation has nothing to do with Michael Jackson at all. But you have to give these people credit for chutzpah: they have photos of Michael on their website, and write about him like they’re old friends.

What’s next? We can only imagine.

Just in case Michael Jackson’s fans are interested, there is currently no ‘ I mean zero, none ‘ charity officially sanctioned by his estate or left behind by him in his name.

Jennifer Hudson Finds the Emerald City

Roger Friedman
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Want to hear something amazing? Look around on You Tube today for a video of Jennifer Hudson performing “Over the Rainbow” last night in Central Park. Hudson was featured during a live show preceding Netflix’s free outdoor screening of “The Wizard of Oz” in celebration of the film’s 70th anniversary. Hudson took the outdoor srstage at the Rumsey Playing Field, and unleashed “Ease On Down the Road” and “I Believe” with unprecedented power. But the precision and soul of her “Over the Rainbow” was startling. She’s turning into the great R&B diva of the new generation.

It’s hard to imagine that “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone with the Wind” were each released in 1939, and directed more or less by the same man, Victor Fleming (he had help on each of them). Now “Oz” returns in a remastered DVD with glorious color and sound. It’s so good that Netflix didn’t mind putting it up on a big drive-in screen in front of 4,000 people who sang along, laughed, cried, and applauded in the middle of scenes last night.

Name the 10 best scenes in film. Certainly one of them, maybe the best, is Dorothy opening the door of her tornado tossed Kansas house, all black and white and dusty, to the spectacular color of Oz, the yellow brick road, Glenda the Good Witch, the Munchkins, and the ruby slippers. Seven decades have passed, but this was Dorothy opening the gate to a new world. Fleming’s film never stops from that moment to the one in which Dorothy and her pals ‘ Bert Lahr seemed more exceptional than ever last night as the cowardly Lion ‘ are first ushered in to see the Wizard. There’s no CGI, no fakery. Just awe that Fleming pulled this off, and burned down Tara almost simultaneously.

The remastered Oz is a two-disc set from Warner Home Video, released yesterday. I’m going to pick it up immediately, along with books by the great New York Times movie writer Aljean Harmetz on both “Oz” and “Gone with the Wind.” My new theory about “Oz” is that Toto is really the central character. More than Dorothy, Toto is is always in jeopardy and driving the action forward. Jacques Derrida could have a field day with this dog. His name means “all” or “altogether.” Brilliant! Maybe Harmetz can explain it for us.

James Bond, Wolverine Pull Out the Big Guns

Roger Friedman
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It was all the A list for Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman’s Broadway debut last night in “A Steady Rain.”

Among the crowd: Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld, Matthew Broderick, Whoopi Goldberg, Stephanie March and Bobby Flay,’ Ellen Barkin, writer-director Doug McGrath, director Darren Aronofsky, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, a gaggle of network executives, plus of course, Hugh and Daniel.

At the Harvard Club after party, the two men ‘ no doubt tired of looking at each other every night for 90 minutes ‘ took up opposite corners and received well wishers. Hugh left early, he said he had to take his kid to school in the morning.

Daniel Craig, the surprise of the show, is getting tired of being asked the same question: does he mind not having action, and just dialogue?

“I’ve done plays before,” he said, a little irritated, and rightly so. We do tend to peg these actors for what brings them to our attention. They have whole long histories. Daniel Craig’s background is in theater. And his future is there, too.

So what next? Playwright Keith Huff is writing a screenplay based on the play, and the movie is on. Look for a frenzy among actresses age 35 for the pivotal role of Connie, unseen in the play but upon which the movie will hinge. Kate Winslet, are you reading this?

P.S. Producer Fred Zollo spent the night grinning from ear to ear. “Steady Rain” is the steadiest ticket on Broadway.

Polanski Mess: Friends, Filmmaker Circle the Wagons

Roger Friedman
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polanski roman 250x300 Polanski Mess: Friends, Filmmaker Circle the WagonsThe Roman Polanski mess is becoming divisive, that’s for sure. Last night I appeared on Joy Behar’s new talk show on Headline News. Joy is on the fence, although I think she’s leaning toward extradition. The other panelist, Jeanine Pirro, kept shouting “Rape!” Yours truly took a milder stand.

Sources close to Polanski tell me, as we all know by now, that he will fight extradition. But what caused this situation? Switzerland, I think, has a lot to answer for. They’ve harbored U.S. fugitives for years. Marc Rich – an evil man who conducted business with enemies of the state and wouldn’t pay millions in taxes — lived there from 1983 until Bill Clinton pardoned him in January 2001. No one went near him, and Rich ran a worldwide billion dollar business with offices right under the FBI’s nose in White Plains, New York. I mean, who’s kidding who?

The answer is: more and more, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office was embarrassed by Polanski. First there was Marina Zenovich’s excellent documentary, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.” The film showed the lunacy of Polanski’s original judge, Lawrence Rittenbrand, and the malfeasance of the court.

Then starting last January 2009, Polanski’s lawyers — emboldened by the film — started filing motions against the court. Samantha Geimer, Polanski’s victim, also filed to have the charges dismissed. I am told that all through this year, Zenovich was filming in the courthouse. All of these things were like taunting the District Attorney: “Come and get me.”

Zenovich, by the way, has flown with her film crew to Switzerland. She’s making the sequel to “Wanted and Desired.”

You can read just about anywhere what Polanski did to Geimer in 1977 when she was 13 years old. It was obviously wrong. He made a plea bargain, served 43 days in prison, and expected that a final deal had been made with prosecutors. When he learned that Rittenbrand was going to ambush him, Polanski fled the U.S.

There are many things to say in Polanski’s defense thirty-one years later. He has never been accused of anything else. He is not a threat to the community, or the world. He’s been happily married for twenty years and has raised a family. It’s not unreasonable to say that this was an isolated moment in his life. Thirty-one years. As a judge said in a case I was once attending, where only 14 years had passed, “Murderers get off in less time.”

Indeed, in Los Angeles, celebrities accused of murder walk around as free men. O.J. Simpson is only in jail because of an unrelated case, in another state. Robert Blake lives a good life. It took two trials each to put away both the Menendezes and Phil Spector.

Without question it’s time to let the Roman Polanski story be over. He’s done his time. To paraphrase the Eagles’ “Desperado,” his prison was walking in a world all alone.

Paging Josh Harnett to Play The Night Stalker of L.A.

Roger Friedman
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Famed Mafia chronicler and true crime writer Phil Carlo wants Josh Hartnett to play the Night Stalker of Los Angeles, Richard Ramirez. Carlo’s famous book on the subject has already gone through 22 printings.

Carlo has other Hollywood news. Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden, and his producing partner (and bnrother in law) Nick Karaylannis have just optioned “The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez,” ‘from Carlo to turn it into a movie. Cornell is quite the Renaissance man: he and his wife Vicky, and Nick, own a Paris nightclub called “Black Calvados.”

Anyway, the real hero of this item is Phil Carlo. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2004, but that didn’t stop him from writing two more books. His new one, “The Butcher: Anatomy of’ a Mafia Psychopath,” is released today by Harper Collins. Mickey Rourke, who attended Carlo’s book party last week at the Greenwich Hotel, will play the main character on screen.

Michael Jackson Sold Out by His “Friend” Shmuley

Roger Friedman
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It’s sort of amazing watching Shmuley Boteach, a rabbi with no congregation other than an unwitting public, selling out Michael Jackson. He’s just published a book of interviews he taped with Michael back in 2000-2001. All the money goes to Boteach. There’s no charity involved. (Ironically, Boteach also recently published a book called “The Blessing of Enough: Rejecting Material Greed, Embracing Spiritual Hunger.”)

That wasn’t the case in 2000 when I met both Michael and Boteach together one November night. It was at the home of PR guru Howard Rubenstein. Boteach had convinced Michael to start a new charity with him called Time for Kids. They were going to teach parents to spend time with their children.

There were about 3o people in the Rubensteins’ Fifth Avenue living room. Boteach gave a long speech about Michael being the “most misunderstood” celebrity in the world, said he loved children so much he had mannequins of them in his Neverland bedroom. That revelation went over like a lead balloon.

On February 14, 2001, Time for Kids had its first and only get together, People bought tickets to see Michael, Boteach and assorted celebrities like Johnnie Cochran, Mother Love, Judith Regan, Chuck Woolery and Dr. Drew Pinsky talk about spending more time with children. The event was called “Love, Work, and Parenting: Can You Be a Success in the Bedroom, the Boardroom, and the Family Room?” It was only 70% full. The tickets were $40, $30, and $20.

Michael told the crowd, when he finally spoke: “I’m having trouble finding a date for myself even though Rabbi Shmuley tells me he’s going to find me the perfect woman. And I tell him, as long as it’s not a journalist!” Here’s a transcript of Michael’s speech.

When the accounting for the event finally came in on a Form 990, it showed (I reported then) a total of $203,185 collected from direct public support. At the same time, the charity’s expenses totaled $259,432. All but $20,000 of that was spent on staff salaries and office expenses. No money went to children of any kind.

Listed on the IRS filing were an organization president, secretary and treasurer. The latter two, this reporter discovered after making some calls, were Boteach’s sister and mother. The sister, Ateret Diveroli, repeated exactly what the mother had: “I’m not part of that anymore.”

Mrs. Diveroli insisted to me that her brother was “very honest” and had stopped working with Michael Jackson “because nothing was happening. He wasn’t doing anything.”

That was pretty much it for Michael and Shmuley’s friendship. There was a trip to Oxford a couple of months later, but by June 2001 Jackson’s “Invincible” album came out. In September he performed his 30th anniversary shows. Shmuley was gone. From the time Jackson was arrested in 2003 until his death, Boteach was out of his life. Jackson surely had no memory of making tapes with Boteach, and no desire to have them published.

And yet, Shmuley is back. He will flog his short, unheralded relationship to Michael Jackson for as long as the public — or TV bookers– can bear it. The real kicker: that his publicist sent out press releases yesterday, on Yom Kippur, offering copies of the book and excerpts. While every other rabbi in the world was praying, Shmuley Boteach was busy marketing Michael Jackson for profit. Buyer beware.

Billy Joel’s $3 Mil Book Deal

Roger Friedman
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76818 Joel billy concert 278x150 Billy Joels $3 Mil Book Deal Billy Joel’s had an up and down year, for sure: a hit concert tour with Elton John, but a much publicized divorce from his wife of four years, Katie Lee.

But now Billy’s ready to tell all, or at least some of it. He’s got a $3 million deal for an autobiography with HarperCollins. Veteran film and music writer Fred Schruers is working on it with him.

Billy has a great story to tell if he can put it all on paper. First, there’s all that colorful character stuff about growing up on Long Island and becoming a “piano man.”

But then: The marriage to first wife Elizabeth, for whom he wrote “Just the Way You Are.” Her brother, Frank, ripped Billy off for millions. Then Billy also went after famed music attorney Allen Grubman.

Following that episode, there’s the marriage to Christie Brinkley, their daughter, Alexa, and that part of his life. Following his divorce, Billy also has some colorful recollections about driving around the Hamptons.

But more importantly, and past the gossip: just hearing Billy Joel talk about his music, other people’s songs and music in general should be fascinating. He’s great at giving master classes, and those who heard him explain Jimmy Webb’s ” Wichita Lineman” at a Songwriters Hall of Fame dinner a few years ago know how good he is at that stuff.

The big question is: Will he call the book “Piano Man”? The heavy betting is on that title. I’d go for “Just the Way I Am.”

Streisand Admits to A List Audience At Historic Village Vanguard Show: “Singing ‘People’ Is Boring”

Roger Friedman
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Streisand Admits to A List Audience At Historic Village Vanguard Show: “Singing ‘People’ Is Boring”

Barbra Streisand, perhaps the greatest performer of her generation, made history last night for her fans as she returned to her Greenwich Village roots after almost 50 years.

As a promotional effort for her latest album, “Love is the Answer,” the eternally youthful looking Streisand brought a four-piece jazz band into the Village Vanguard, a downstairs club in the West Village where she got her start almost five decades ago. Among the guests were fans who’d won a lottery for the available 78 seats.

But the other fans were also pretty remarkable: former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with daughter Chelsea and her fiancee, actor James Brolin (Streisand’s husband), Sarah Jessica Parker, Nicole Kidman, Donna Karan, famed theater actress Phyllis Newman who is also the widow of Adolph Green, lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, mogul Barry Diller (solo — wife Diane von Furstenberg was away, he told me), the New York Times’s Frank Rich and Alex Witchel, Deborah Lee Furness aka Mrs. Hugh Jackman, Columbia Records chief Rob Stringer, and longtime Hollywood manager Sandy Gallin.

The brilliant record producer Tommy LiPuma, who made “Love is the Answer” with Streisand and Diana Krall, was also there.

Of course, not everyone could fit into the Village Vanguard, so Sony Music, the parent of Columbia Records, arranged for a closed-circuit feed to the Louis XVI suite at the Waldorf Astoria. That’s where yours truly watched the show on large TV screens, along with about 50 more of Streisand’s friends and family including Joy Behar of “The View,” another longtime Streisand associate and music exec Charles Koppelman (now CEO of Martha Stewart’s company), and even the rabbi who’s head of the Conservative Jewish movement in Israel!

Streisand started the hour-long show, which can be seen on AOL Broadband this evening, introduced by her devoted manager of 48 years, Marty Ehrlichman. She also introduced Jimmy Cobb, the legendary (now 80 year old) jazz drummer who played her early albums (and was Miles Davis’s drummer), as well as the waiter who gave her career tips all those years ago.

From our vantage point in the Waldorf, Streisand looked like “buttah” in the most intimate setting she’s performed in for years. Maybe because of that, she was a little too relaxed. Speaking off the cuff, Streisand introduced over a dozen songs with many reminiscences. Some of them were telling: “When I sing songs like ‘People’ over and over, I get a little bored,” she admitted. So “People,” one of her signature numbers, was not in the show.

Instead she sang “My Funny Valentine” at the suggestion of a friend, after not singing it for years. She included Jacques Brel’s “If You Go Away” including the anecdote of how and she and her husband (Elliot Gould, presumably) and another couple flew to Marseilles years ago to see Brel, only to have him not sing it himself. She performed her own hit, “Evergreen,” because she said it was President Clinton’s favorite. “I feel Virginia’s here, too,” she said, referring to the president’s late mother. “She was one of my surrogate mothers.”

Some of the other numbers included one by the Bergmans (”I’ve recorded 52 of their songs”), “Bewitched Bothered, and Bewildered,” “My Heart Belongs to Me,” “Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” “Gentle Rain,” “Spring Can Really Hang You Up,” “Make Someone Happy,” “Where Do You Start?” and then threw the room a big bone, as it were: the Bergmans’ (with Marvin Hamlisch), “The Way We Were.” On the screen, you could see Sarah Jessica Parker tear up, like half the room.

It was a night bathed in nostalgia, but it wasn’t always perfect. The first thing Streisand asked yours truly (of all things) after she and most of the guests transferred up to the Waldorf was: “Was I okay? Did my voice sound alright?” Yes, for real, she was verklempt. We told her she said, “People” was boring. “I did?” she exclaimed, “Oh my god!”

The answer is: she told the audience, “I haven’t sung since January.” She and the band only rehearsed for this gig for two days. If she were anyone else, Streisand would get an A plus. But with that little preparation, maybe we’ll say A minus. She missed some high notes. Sometimes, toward the end, you could a little hoarseness. She was not the usual Streisand the perfectionist. It’s incredibly ingratiating to find out she’s human, taking chances, and real. It didn’t quite bring her down to a mortal level, but made her accessible in a new way.

Now, if she “practices, practices, practices,” she knows what her next stop will be. “What about Carnegie Hall?” she asked us, in all seriousness.

She should try it!

Bono Channels Michael Jackson in U2 Extravaganza Show

Roger Friedman
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A pop star fishes a 12-year-old boy out of the audience during his concert, runs around the stage with him, holds his hand, before returning him to his parents. Later, a group of volunteers holding candles fan out along the ramp encircling the stage.

Is it Michael Jackson? Sure sounds like it. No, it’s Bono. And the show was last night at Giants Stadium, where U2 put on an extravaganza that only Jackson and Liberace could have imagined.

This is U2’s 360 tour, the follow-up to last spring’s album release, “No Line on the Horizon.” Here’s the problem, which was unforeseen: “No Line” was not a hit, and yielded no singles except for the grating “Get on Your Boots.”’ It was the first-ever mistake in the U2 catalog, and should have been rethought. Instead, “No Line” and its turgid, mostly tuneless songs was foisted on the public. Months later, they are still unsingable and unmemorable.

So Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullins, Jr. have to take the bulk of their catalog and reimagine it onstage without benefit, really, of new material anyone wants to hear. Thursday night’s show ran the gamut from enervating to joyous, with lots of potholes in between. The highlights of the show were standbys such as “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “One” and “With Or Without You.”

But missing from the lineup were “New Years Day,” “In the Name of Love,” “Original of the Species” and a few others that could have energized the proceedings. “Vertigo” was refreshing and really rocked. “Stay” would have been extraordinary except that Bono “went up” and forgot the words a quarter of the way in. He looked rattled and never regained his composure during the song. Too bad — it’s so good, and Bono and the Edge played it just as they did at Elvis Costello’s taping last week in Toronto.

I’ve seen U2 at Giants Stadium before, when it was just them and their songs. But last night’s show was about more, more, more. The stage is round, juts out into the middle of the field, encircled by a ramp. There are two massive, moving bridges. The whole has a kind of gigantic round space ship-like structure that is really a massive video screen. It’s suspended by a spiderlike cover, maybe meant to be used later in the “Spider-Man” musical, for which U2 has written the music.

The whole of the concept isn’t bad, but it’s undermined by a neon steering wheel that’s also suspended from the top, and fitted with a microphone. This is a mistake. Bono, dressed in a suit jacket that’s lit up along the seams, sings two great songs into the steering wheel and then swings along on it. This should be stopped at once. All the intimacy of the show is jettisoned.

U2 has also been a band of bombast, that was their appeal. Presenting them in stripped-down settings made the band very accessible, and showcased the finer aspects of their songwriting. (The newer album is just a misstep. They’ll be back.) But this new show is all about more, bigger, and unnecessary stuff. All the tamps and bridges — Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, and Bruce Springsteen know how to use them. Bono and Edge seemed indifferent to them. Either use them or lose them. Right now, they are bridges to nowhere.

But don’t think U2 isn’t full of pleasures. The band remains a hot engine, with Edge driving it full force. I liked the inclusion of bits and pieces of other people’s songs — the Rolling Stones, Ben E. King, etc. — sort of tying U2’s music to rock history. It was a bold move, and it worked.

And Bono is still Bono. There’s a video speech from Bishop Desmond Tutu. The candle ceremony is for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the jailed female leader of Burma’s (Myanmar) opposition political party. It’s a great thought, and as usual Bono’s heart is in the right place. But I doubt many of the 81,000 U2 fans had any idea what was going on. If you did word associations with 99% of Americans, they’d answer “shave” after the word “Burma.”

But U2 rocks on, and Live Nation has a hit in a mostly sold out to the rafters tour. For every bit of nit picking, there’s still the wonders of “Mysterious Ways” and “I Still Don’t Know What I’m Looking For” and “Beautiful Day.” And that still puts them way out ahead of just about everyone else. But really, leave the kids in the audience. It’s just too weird.

James Bond, Wolverine: Daniel Craig, Hugh Jackman Hit Broadway

Roger Friedman
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Movie stars come and go on Broadway, most trying to revive careers or make a point. Some succeed (Jane Fonda), some don’t (Julia Roberts).

On Tuesday, Daniel Craig, best known for playing James Bond, and Hugh Jackman, aka Wolverine, make their official premiere in Keith Huff’s 90-minute two-hander called “A Steady Rain.” They are each at the height of their career, and need to prove nothing to no one. So you wonder, what is going on here?

On Friday night, the press got its first look at these two dipped-in-gold movie stars on stage. The Gerald Schoenfeld Theater was packed with media, as well as film director Joel Schumacher. The New York Times’s Ben Brantley was tenth row on the aisle. Outside on West 45th St., fans and autograph hounds were four deep against metal barriers. It doesn’t help that right next door, “God’s Carnage” has resumed performances with Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, and James Gandolfini.

Jackman, of course, has plenty of stage experience, mostly with musicals. He starred in “The Boy from Oz.” He commanded the Oscars this past year. Craig is more of an unknown quantity. We know him mostly from action films, although he did play poet Ted Hughes in “Sylvia,” and the lead in “Enduring Love.” Both guys are known for stripping off their shirts, not down to emotions.

So I have good news for all involved: Craig and Jackman are just terrific as two Chicago cops recounting their lifelong friendship, partnership, and their tragic undoing. Craig, in particular, is a revelation as Joey, the bachelor who has pined for his friend’s wife and life all these years. A heavy mustache seems to pull Craig’s face down, releasing a look of sorrow and guilt that seems to radiate into his hunched shoulders and through his suit.

Jackman is family man Denny, whose secret life is peeled back like layers of onion skin. Jackman is just as riveting, starting Denny out as a solid, good-time guy and steering him into dangerous territory.

Much more about the specifics of “A Steady Rain” I don’t want to say because the twists and turns of Huff’s plot are just enough to make the audience gasp more than a a few times. You should know that the actors make all this work sitting on padded metal chairs under individual overhead lights, with little of a set and no props to fall back on. It’s all them, with nowhere to hide.

What’s certain is that “Rain” will become a movie, likely with these two men, expanded to include the many characters described by Denny and Joey during the hour and a half. Sidney Lumet should direct it. In the meantime, how nice to have two movie stars so invested in their roles that you almost forget who they are while the curtain is up and the theater is dark. Almost.

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