MURDER FORETOLD? ADRIENNE SHELLY’S SCRIPT IS WEIRDLY PRESCIENT

Poor Meg Ryan. There’s something she doesn’t seem to understand about film festivals. If you’re in a movie that plays at one, especially at an important one, and you’re there to do photo ops, you have to come back and do the Q&A session. It’s just nice, polite stuff, something you do with the director and the cast.

But when the lights went up last night at the end of ‘Serious Moonlight,’ an uneven and slightly weird comedy directed by one of our otherwise favorite people, Cheryl Hines of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ fame, Ryan was nowhere to be seen. Hines had to take the stage bravely with crew members, and answer questions from the audience. (Co-star Timothy Hutton was also absent from the entire proceedings, although he may be in Europe shooting the new Roman Polanski film.)

The odd thing is, Ryan had been there when the lights went down. Not only that, she’d done the photo ops outside on the red carpet. Later, she took pictures with Hines at the after party at Tenjune nightclub, which was funny enough in itself. Earlier, I was told that it was probably impossible to attend the after party since ‘Meg doesn’t want anyone there.’

When I asked a security guard outside the Tribeca theater if Ryan had left during the screening, he replied: ‘Before that. I think it was planned that way.’

(Contrast that with a later screening of ‘Handsome Harry,’ a very likeable drama, at which not inconsiderably talented actors Jamey Sheridan, Steve Buscemi, Campbell Scott, Aidan Quinn, Karen Young, Marian Mayberry, and Bill Sage stayed through their screening and then did their Q&A like mensches.)

So, in other words, Meg believes in the Groucho Marx joke that Woody Allen famously tells in ‘Annie Hall’: ‘I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me.’

Good for her! Iconoclast is an interesting role to play, especially if you have a lot of money or are well invested to weather the recession. Meg Ryan hasn’t actually had a hit movie since 1998, with ‘You’ve Got Mail.’ She’s had ten flops in a row since then, including such unmemorable turns as “The Deal,” “Into the Cut,” “Against the Ropes,” and more recently, the misguided remake of “The Women.”

She’s had some bad luck, some of in self-inflicted. Her affair with Russell Crowe while making ‘Proof of Life’ (one of those flops) in 1999-2000 caused the end of her marriage to Dennis Quaid. It also seems to have permanently damaged her niche as America’s sweetie, killing off the good will she earned from Nora Ephron‘s “Mail,” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” and the Ephron-scripted Rob Reiner classic, “When Harry Met Sally.”

And then there was the plastic surgery: Ryan fell prey to what so many Hollywood actors shouldn’t. Experiments with all kinds of facial alterations didn’t work, leaving her in strange circumstances.

The good news, maybe the only good news, from ‘Serious Moonlight,’ is that she looks great. Her face is more or less back to normal. Not only that, but Hines and cinematographer Nancy Schreiber shot her in the most flattering ways possible, using great angles and softening light. Ryan hardly looks her age, and more importantly, seems more like her old self.

But ‘Serious Moonlight’ is a weird project. It was written by Adrienne Shelly, the beloved actress-writer-director of ‘Waitress’ who was murdered in her New York apartment in November 2006 by a handy man working in her building. Hines, of course, acted in ‘Waitress,’ which was released after Shelly’s murder. She told IndieWire in a short interview that Shelly’s husband asked to direct ‘Serious Moonlight’ while she was doing press for that charming comedy. She should have said no.

I’m sure ‘Serious Moonlight’ was produced with the best of intentions, but it’s eerily prescient. In the movie, essentially, a handyman’landscape guy played by a squinty Justin Long surprises Ryan in her home, fights violently with her off camera, ties her up with silver ‘duck’ tape and throws her into an upstairs bathroom so he can loot her home with drunk, similarly awful punk friends. He also comes close to molesting her in front of her also-tied up hubby (Tim Hutton). How did the people making the film not see this in the script? Let the fidgeting begin!

‘Serious Moonlight’ is an unfunny comedy that somehow combines the worst elements of Michael Haneke’s miserable ‘Funny Games,’ with Reiner’s ‘Misery.’ It begins with Ryan knocking out and tying up with duct tape Hutton, who’s just announced he’s leaving her for a young tart (Kristen Bell.) Ryan tapes him to the toilet so he can use it while they hash out their marriage. Hutton, who also didn’t make the screening, party or Q&A, spends most of the movie in this position, where he has time to contemplate his career since winning the Oscar for ‘Ordinary People’ a lifetime ago.

Since Shelly’s tragic death, her husband has started a foundation in her memory. He also produced this movie. It was a bad idea, but I’m sure approached with the best of intentions. Frankly, all week leading up to the screening I thought the title meant there was some connection to David Bowie‘s song, ‘Let’s Dance’ in which the refrain ‘serious moonlight’ is heard over and over. Sad to say, that was not the case, and I still have no idea why a movie that takes place mostly in a bathroom got this title in the first place. That, and how much of the budget was spent on duck tape.

Oh, and that after party: seems like Meg got her wish. According to WireImage’s website, no one did show up except for Meg and Cheryl Hines.

TONY SOPRANO’S BACK GETS WHACKED

On ‘The Sopranos’ nothing could take down Tony Soprano. Not the New York mob or Russian hookers or even Uncle Junior, who shot him in the stomach.

But at yesterday’s matinee performance of ‘God of Carnage,’ James Gandolfini got wacked. It happened in a scene where Marcia Gay Harden, who plays his wife, jumps on him. Audience members could hear Gandolfini’s back crack. Apparently, the look of pain on his face was very real.

‘I thought, boy he’s good,’ said movie director Armando Iannucci, who was there as Gandolfini’s guest. Iannucci just directed Gandolfini in a terrific new satire, a film called ‘In the Loop’ which opened at the Tribeca Film Festival last night. It co-stars Mimi Kennedy and David Basche on the American side, and Brits Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, and Gina McKee on the UK side.

Iannucci went backstage as soon as the show was over, to congratulate Gandolfini and remind him of the opening night screening and party. ‘But you could see he was in real pain,’ the director said after receiving well earned kudos at his party, sponsored by the upscale Quintessentially.

‘He said, I really did it,’ reported Iannucci. And so Gandolfini, who always complains tongue in cheek about his terrible movie career, missed his best opening night so far. ‘In the Loop’ is a deft, trenchant, and very, very funny send up of the American and British governments as they decide to launch a war in the Middle East. (Sound familiar?) There are no sacred cows, everyone gets the you know what taken out of them. Gandolfini plays a five star general who never sees battle and is anti-war. His scenes with Mimi Kennedy are priceless.

Now the big question over at ‘God of Carnage’ is whether or not Gandolfini will be back for Tuesday night’s show. ‘God of Carnage’ is playing at an average 95% capacity, making the biggest hit play on Broadway right now with co-stars Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels. So producers will be sending masseuses and heat packs to Gandolfini’s house today, and crossing fingers that he can walk on Tuesday night. My advice: lie flat on the floor with two big pillows under your head and under your knees, Jimmy. It’s boring, but it works. That, and a couple of good muscle relaxers!

ROSIE TWITTERED BY HER OWN MRS. KRAVITZ
Remember Gladys Kravitz? She was Samantha and Darren’s nosy neighbor on ‘Bewitched.’ She was always spying on them, and then trying to report it to her uninterested husband. Thank goodness she didn’t have Twitter!

Last week, Rosie O’Donnell and her wife, Kelli, got a taste of Kravitz from Julia Allison, a self-promoting Twitter addict who’s on a campaign for fame at any cost. She heard the O’Donnells fighting in their apartment, then sent the world out a Twitter blast. (If there’s a coop board in that house, I wonder what they’ll make of this.)

Rosie and Kelli are non plussed. They’re used to it. Tonight, Rosie’s Broadway Kids has a big fundraiser at New World Stages, Kelli is working on her seven day family cruise from Seattle to Alaska in July. (Check out www.rfamilycruises.com.)

Says Rosie, with a laugh, via email: ‘we r ok
life with 4 kids in the spotlight isn’t easy / but we always come thru.’

She says of Allison, who came to the O’Donnells’ door with at midnight with ‘a bottle of wine and a puppy’: ‘I wouldn’t know her to look at her’Creepy.’

JULIET, WHAT LIGHT THROUGH YONDER THEATER BREAKS?; DEPP DOORS; GOODBYE MAUDE
It looks like Gary Winick’s ‘Letters to Juliet’ has its leading and maybe a Romeo. Amanda Seyfried will play the former, and the word is that Rupert Friend will be the latter. More casting is to come, as this production shoots in Italy (nice gig!) starting in June for Summit Entertainment’How do we know Rupert Friend? Depending on whom you believe, he is either engaged to or engaged with Keira Knightley‘
‘Director Tom DiCillo reports that Johnny Depp will in fact be doing the narration for his Doors documentary. Let’s hope it’s soon. DiCillo himself filled in for the Sundance showing, and the movie was very well received. Once Depp is done, the world can see this wonderful chronicle of Jim Morrison and his pals’
‘Bea Arthur was a powerhouse of an actress, an icon but also a standard bearer for women. She proved you didn’t have to be dainty, a wallflower or ing’nue to win over an audience’s hearts. Rarely has an actress left such a indelible mark on the culture, but through ‘Golden Girls,’ ‘Maude,’ and her vast theater work, she will never be forgotten’

BLONDIE, RAMONES, TALKING HEADS GOT THEIR START HERE

Readers of my old column will recall the tremendous efforts that went into saving the 30 year old legendary Bowery music hall, CBGB’s, back in 2005-2006. The club that launched Blondie, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Patti Smith, and so many others finally closed in 2007. It’s now a John Varvatos store.

Now the real, sad story of how CBGB was driven into extinction largely by a man named Lawrence ‘Muzzy’ Rosenblatt is being told in a documentary that debuted last night at the Tribeca Film Festival.

‘Burning Down the House’ is directed by Mandy Stein, daughter of Sire Records founder Seymour Stein, and the famed Ramones manager, the late, great Linda Stein. At the Village 7 theater last night, Mandy welcomed her dad, sister Samantha, plus a clutch of CBGB’s old timers from Bebe Buell, photographer Bob Gruen and Blondie’s Debbie Harry to Larry Ratso Sloman, Ann Jones, and dozens of musicians and scenesters who populated the punk rock world from the mid 1970s.

Stein has done an admirable job. She dutifully followed the saga of Rosenblatt’s one man mission to destroy CBGB’s, and the dovetailing story of the club’s beloved owner, Hilly Krystal, who was diagnosed with lung cancer during the fight and died shortly thereafter. Among those interviewed or featured in the doc are Steve van Zandt, Sting, Jim Jarmusch, Luc Sante, Harry herself, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads, Duff McKagan from Guns ‘n’ Roses, Patti Smith, etc.

Rosenblatt–who runs the Bowery Residents Committee, which was CGBG’s landlord’declined to be interviewed. In fact, during the actual battle, Rosenblatt refused to meet or talk to Krystal.

Some things that I reported back in 2005-2006 are not in the movie and are worth noting.

The Bowery Residents Committee listed the CBGB space for rent with Cushman Wakefield. A member of the BRC’s board of directors happened to be Alex Cohen, a senior executive at the gigantic real-estate firm.
He told me at the time that it was no conflict of interest.

“I’m not profiting from this,” he said. However, the BRC was seeking a rent increase from $20,000 to $40,000 a month.

As I wrote back in July 2005:

The BRC is no small-time institution for the homeless. It’s a $25 million-a-year operation, with backing and directors who have deep pockets.’ According to the BRC’s most recent available tax filing, Rosenblatt is paid $213,000 a year out of the $1.5 million earned by BRC officers, directors, and key employees. Who knew the homeless business could be so remunerative?

One of their primary backers, ironically, is an organization called Seedco Financial, which ‘ according to its Web site ‘ finances low-income job-training programs and backs small businesses, including downtown art galleries. Seedco got the BRC its seed money and continues to donate large amounts on an annual basis.

The wife of the president of Seedco, Mrs. William (Miriam) Grinker, told me then, “We have no comment. We’re not getting involved in this.”

Others on the BRC board include journalist Julie Salamon, who writes for the New York Times and once authored a book about the disastrous making of “The Bonfire of the Vanities.”

But ‘Burning Down the House’ isn’t all about Rosenblatt’s desire to replace punk rock with designer jeans. It’s also about the music and culture that CBGB’s represented, how it transformed the Bowery at a time when New York City was down on its luck, and how it will be remembered. Mandy Stein has done a great job of recording this legacy, and I hope we see it playing a lot soon, on HBO, Sundance, or any of the quality cable channels. It deserves a wide audience, especially among those who love what music used to be.

WOODY ‘WORKS’ MAGIC WITH NEW COMEDY

It doesn’t seem possible, but with ‘Whatever Works”which opened the Tribeca Film Festival last night’Woody Allen makes it two in a row.

That is, following ‘Vicki Cristina Barcelona,’ Woody has rendered a full on New York romantic comedy reminiscent of the best of this work from the 1980s. ‘Whatever Works’ is something of a comic masterpiece, full of trademark Allen raving and ranting but richer and fuller than any comedy he’s made since the days of ‘Hannah and Her Sisters,’ ‘Manhattan,’ and ‘Annie Hall.’

Of course, the big difference is that Woody isn’t in ‘Whatever Works.’ In his stead is TV genius Larry David, playing Boris, the least likeable curmudgeonly New Yorker to come along in films in years. Boris is a cranky physicist, almost nominated for a Nobel prize, and self-proclaimed ‘genius’ whose wife finally leaves him.

Into his isolated world comes a whirlwind, one of those beautifully conceived female characters Allen is so famous from stretching from Annie Hall through Tina in ‘Broadway Danny Rose’ to Aunt Bea in ‘Radio Days.’ Evan Rachel Wood is simply astonishing as Melodie, a runaway from the South who convinces Boris to let her stay with him. Not long after, her mother’in the person of the equally splendid Patricia Clarkson‘arrives, and spins off a second, fully conceived plot that fits seamlessly with the main story.

Like all of Allen’s great films, death figures strongly in the story. But then, so do waves of one liners, zingy jokes that are fresh baked and aimed at just about every sacred cow. There is also a strong literary and cultural undercurrent, with references running the gamut from Groucho Marx to William Faulkner. (Boris actually cruelly compares Melodie to ‘Benjy’ from ‘The Sound and the Fury.’). It’s maybe the first comedy ever to introduce the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty and relate it to attitudes during a menage a trois.

But make no mistake, ‘Whatever Works”while it ruminates around for big ideas and glorious insights’is still a comedy. It’s that unlike modern comedies, the laughs are drawn from the brilliantly conceived characters and not their situations. The central character, Boris Yellnikoff, is a germ freak hypochondriac who’s really a send up of Woody’s own trademark characters. What’s great about Boris is that he’s hyper-aware of his own demented personality. He gets it, all too well. Larry told me after the screening that the hardest part of making a Woody Allen film is “memorizing all that dialogue.” But he did it, including some huge (and funny) monologues.

What ‘Works’ is that Woody, for the first time in years, just lets go. For years he’s reined in his characters or second guessed them, resulting in a lot of mediocre films that could have been so much better. ‘Works’ reminded me of his best short stories and works of fiction, pieces that are not self-conscious. In this film, he just lets it all fall away, and so we get Boris unsuccessfully jumping out of windows, losing and finding love, and these little interwoven stories of other lives being reshaped when the characters resolve that in love, ‘whatever works’ is better than nothing working at all.

There were plenty of stars, too, at the premiere, and not just Robert DeNiro (who had gigantic and unfriendly bodyguards with him in the theater and at the private party later): Debra Messing, Cheryl Hines, Harvey Keitel., Charlie Rose, Melissa Leo, Micky Dolenz, Lance Reddick, Uma Thurman, Morgan Spurlock, and ‘ strangely’Mary Kate Olsen, looking very troll-ish.

‘Whatever Works’ doesn’t open until June 19th, but mark my words, the film has spawned the first Oscar nominees in Wood and Clarkson, with Woody sure to get screenplay and maybe even directing nods next winter. Don’t bet against this: Woody holds the record for actresses nominated for Oscars from his movies, and winners, too like Dianne Wiest, Mira Sorvino, Penelope Cruz and, of course, Diane Keaton.

LIAM NEESON: PUBLIC GRIEF THERAPY

No one could really believe their eyes last Sunday night when Liam Neeson walked onto the red carpet at the Broadway premiere of ‘Mary Stuart.’

His “date” was Ralph Fiennes. Neeson posed for pictures on the carpet before entering the Broadhurst Theater. He and Fiennes, however, eschewed sitting in the orchestra section with other stars like Jeremy Irons, Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden, Tyne Daly, Jessica Walter and Ron Liebman, Kevin Spacey (with the usual clutch of male admirers), and Marian Seldes.

Instead, the former ‘Schindler’s List’ stars preferred to sit in the balcony, away from the hubbub. Still they came to the Tavern on the Green after party. Neeson, whose wife Natasha Richardson died tragically one month ago, doesn’t look very happy. He doesn’t speak to people he doesn’t know, and keeps his head straight, refusing to respond even to friends’ entreaties. Most of the color is drawn from his face.

It’s Neeson’s way of moving on, although not the usual grief therapy. In the four weeks since Richardson’s death he’s been to St. Tropez, according to one report, and taken in a Knicks game and opening day at Yankee Stadium with his sons. They’ve also made a pilgrimage to London. But for Neeson this is probably the most normal way of living. Sitting at home in the dark is no solution. I’m impressed by the deferential way strangers are treating him.

One reason Neeson was at ‘Mary Stuart,’ I’m told, was to support actor John Benjamin Hickey, who was a close friend of Richardson. Many of Hickey’s other close friends were in the audience on opening night, too, including Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and John Slattery and Talia Balsam. Hickey, a real journeyman New York actor who’s paid his dues in full, is absolutely superb as the Earl of Leicester. He’s on his way to a Tony nomination, if not award. His friends are thrilled. They’ve waited a long time to see him make good. And what a nice tribute from Neeson, just being there.

VANITY FAIR COURTS TRIBECA STARS

Even though they cancelled their annual party in Cannes, Vanity Fair weathered on Tuesday night in drizzle with its annual gala for the Tribeca Film Festival.

Up the steps of the 82 year old Roman classical style New York State Supreme Court house in Foley Square came the likes of Bono (wearing eyeglasses bigger than anything Elton John tried in the 70s) with wife Ali, and a taciturn Kanye West ‘ mega pop stars, even though they have nothing to do with film, per se. Luckily, hot on their heels was a real film star, Robert DeNiro, with wife Grace Hightower, and their Tribeca Film Fest partners Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff.

If there weren’t more actual movie stars, there was no end of interesting people to talk to: Debra Messing was accepting congrats on her just announced new comedy on NBC, Ari Emanuel was trying not to answer questions about his Endeavor Agency’s imminent takeover of the esteemed William Morris Agency, Gayle King was chatting with ‘Push’ director Lee Daniels, and Tom Freston was palling around with cult comic and TV director David Steinberg.

Of course, the usual Conde Nast suspects and friends were helping the effusive Graydon Carter celebrate: Diane von Furstenberg, Andre Leon Talley, Anna Wintour, Lisa Robinson, Fran Lebowitz, Beth Kseniak, and so on. When they’re all together in one place they now resemble one of those Risko murals up in Carter’s Waverly Inn or Monkey Bar come to life.

All of this took place under the portico of the magnificent courthouse, which is usually lined with backed up queues of alleged criminals and their attorneys’if only marble columns could talk! (Police Commish Ray Kelly was there, and must have felt right at home.) Large neon signs flashed the Vanity Fair logo to the ghostly abandoned for the night Foley Square along with that of Panavision, the night’s sponsor, owned by Revlon’s Ronald Perelman.

And still the waves of the well known kept coming: Regis and Joy Philbin, Larry David, Harvey Keitel. Edie Falco, Griffin Dunne, Rosie Perez, Josh Lucas, restaurateur Drew Nieporent, painter Stephen Hannock (who talked hip replacement with Peggy Siegal), Chris Walken, John Turturro, top manager Johnnie Planco and wife Lois, Les Moonves and the newly pregnant Julie Chen, Salman Rushdie, Patty Smyth and John McEnroe.

They all mixed in with odd society types from the Upper East Side, a mixture of vaguely foreign accents and stretched face lifts. I did like it when Reinaldo Herrera, a sort of VF regular from Carnegie Hill, startled pretty Joy Philbin with a compliment: ‘You are the best thing on television!’ he cried. ‘I co-hosted with Regis last week,’ Joy explained to me quickly as Herrera swept past.

So that’s what the rich people do in the morning! Why not?

MCTEERS FOR FEARS

The talk of Broadway is Janet McTeer in ‘Mary Stuart,’ which is not a play about the late star of ‘Search for Tomorrow.’ It’s London’s Donmar Warehouse update of Frederick Schiller’s saga (written in 1800) of Queen Elizabeth I’s eventual beheading of her livelier turned Catholic cousin. Elizabeth is played by Harriet Walter, who’s no slouch either. Each of the actresses was nominated for Best Actress the other day by the Outer Critics Circle.

But what about Janet McTeer? The statuesque beauty burst into the American consciousness with the movie ‘Tumbleweeds’ in 1999. She received an Oscar nomination for her stunning performance in the mother-daughter road movie. She also won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a historic Broadway production of ‘A Doll’s House.’ In the late 90s, McTeer was poised to follow Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet right down the red carpet of fame and fortune.

As Mary Stuart she is breathtaking’certain to win another Tony. A decade later, she could have it all again. So what’s the problem? I asked her on Sunday night, when McTeer entered the ‘Mary Stuart’ after party at Tavern on the Green with, of course, no fanfare.

‘I just couldn’t take it,’ she told me, meaning the fame and maybe the fortune. ‘I had to go home.’ That’s it’which is fine, but too bad for us. She did go home after ‘Tumbleweeds,’ and returned to London theatre and TV.’ Maybe this time she’ll hire a publicist, stick around, get an American agent, meet Harvey Weinstein’not!’ We’ll just have to appreciate her while she’s here!