Wanna see rock stars sing LIVE on a TV show? Sting and Shaggy did exactly that today on “The Talk.” It was 11:50am in Los Angeles, too, and Sting is recovering from a bad cold. Sting and Shaggy just get better and better. I hope they get some Grammy nominations. Best Pop Album–“44/876.”
I waited through 45 minutes of jabbering to see this. How can people watch this show? The Issue of the Day is themselves. Nice to see Lisa Ling, though. They should hire her.
Yikes.
Alec Baldwin’s talk show debut on ABC scored just 2.71 million viewers. It was the lowest rated show on the big three networks. Twice as many people watched “Madame Secretary” on CBS.
The talk show got a lower rating that daytime soap operas, actually.
Last Sunday, “Shark Tank” did slightly better in the time period.
Alec has been hosting “The Match Game” on ABC Sunday nights. The talk show had to have been a contractual perk to keep him going as a modern day Gene Rayburn. His guests were Robert De Niro and Taraji P. Henson.
The interviews were fine. But it turned out that between being on “Saturday Night Live” the night before and broadcasting this tape, Alec gave a speech in New Haven where he announced that we have to overthrow the government. What a twenty four hours!
Lesley Stahl’s “60 Minutes” interview with Donald Trump put the newsmagazine at number 1 for the night.
The only thing 60 Minutes” didn’t beat was football. The total was 11 million viewers.
Stahl’s piece crushed ABC’s “20/20” interview Friday night– and not just in ratings. Stahl’s interview was a superior piece of TV journalism. She covered as much as she could, she stood her ground, and she didn’t let Trump get away with anything.
We learned more of the same, basically– that he’s rude, dismissive, arrogant. His line, “I’m the president, you’re not,” was priceless. So was his assertion that he doesn’t really care about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, because “we won”– that’s Trump in a nutshell.
Trump allowed the interview to try and appeal to the non Fox crowd– people with a pulse, brain wave, educated– that he’s reasonable so the Republicans would prevail on November 6th. I don’t think that it worked. But we’ll see on election day.
Alec Baldwin’s new talk show on ABC– it’s modeled maybe on Tom Snyder, with a retro network logo and opening.
Baldwin’s first guest was Robert De Niro, also a Trump critic. He told Baldwin: “We have a president who thinks he’s a gangster.”
There was a nice discussion of De Niro’s career, family and business. And then, Trump:
“I’m so offended by this person, and by Republicans in general and how they behave. When I see him I know what he is, and he knows what he is.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve seen a lot in this world…this is totally severe. I felt I had to say whatever I could say. It’s infuriating, this guy. We gotta do something. .. I saw Jeff Flake at the Global Citizen thing in Central Park, I said you’re a hero. He’s actually conflicted. You could see it with the ladies in the elevator. I don’t understand why some of these Republicans don’t say I’m outta here…There’s a point now where these people are taking for the rest of their lives…they’re paying such a price making a deal with the devil.”
De Niro also talked about his six kids and called his youngest daughter, who’s almost seven, “a miracle. A miracle.”
Baldwin heaped praise on De Niro for his extraordinary acting career. De Niro said, “You’re going to make me cry.” He said his movies, especially with Martin Scorsese, “will be remembered.”
Baldwin’s show is like Charlie Rose’s old show, it looks like something that should be on PBS. At the end of the live interview with De Niro, there was then an animated segment that continued the interview with the two actors. It was very strange and unnecessary.
PS The music is just about the same as Charlie Rose. Hmmmm…
Tonight’s “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” may be key to its survival on E!
Last week’s show scored their lowest number of viewers in years– just 809,000. It was the 35th most watched cable show last Sunday out of 50 entries.
The last time I wrote about the K’s ratings, they had settled into an average of 1 million a week, off about 400K from their past average.
But three weeks ago they dipped under 1 million for the first time to 919,000. The next week they were back up a notch over to 1.061 million. But then last week the whole thing collapsed.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with Kanye West, or the family’s basic odiousness. But if tonight’s show– we’ll see results on Tuesday– doesn’t bounce back, the party may be over.
See you Tuesday.
Back on September 27th, Ariana Grande had a Twitter meltdown. Luckily we took a screenshot when she said nothing would ever :b” ok again. She deleted the Tweet, but we kept it, as a keepsake.
That was around the time she pulled of the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live.” Then Pete Davidson, her putative fiance, changed the tattoo on his neck of Ariana’s logo to a heart. It was clear that their love affair had cooled. Maybe Ariana didn’t like him joking about fooling with her birth control? Anyway, it’s done, and not a moment too soon.TMZ says so, but we knew it on September 27th.
Hey, I can stay in their $16 million rental until there’s a new tenant, kids. Just drop me a text.
Listen, Pete is very funny. Ariana is such a great singer, and has a huge future. But apart, apart, apart.
“Saturday Night Live” was up last night in total audience, so that’s a good thing. And, actually, it’s all good news.
People like you and me tuned in more than people say, thirty years old. That’s ok, too.
The reason was to see Paul Simon make his 9th appearance on the show, on the occasion of his 77th birthday. His two performances with the Juilliard grads called Y Music were better than just about anything on “SNL” in eons.
The other reason to tune in was Seth Meyers, who had a funny monologue and appeared in more sketches than he ever did when he was on the show back in the day. The whole episode was an A show, with lots of Kenan Thompson– always good news– no Mikey Day (hello?), and not enough Kate McKinnon.
Total audience was 4.4 million, key demo was 1.5. It seemed like someone– Columbia Records?– made an actual commercial for Paul Simon’s newest album, “In the Blue Light.” Maybe they could buy time during other appropriate shows. Up til last night I’d never seen any support for that album.
It’s all over for the movie no one saw but got great reviews: Jacques Audiard’s “The Sisters Brothers.” The movie cost $38 million and made just $1 million in a month of release.
Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly got terrific notices, and everyone was excited about Audiard making an English language film. But Annapurna Pictures, owned by Megan Ellison and backed by her father, Oracle Corp. billionaire Larry Ellison, blew it. Now, the film is done, a total loss, and Annpurna is in peril.
What happened? No marketing. No publicity. No distribution plan. The people Ellison has hired didn’t have the experience or the know how to launch the film.
But Annapurna has been plagued as of late with issues since Megan Ellison went from backing terrific indie flicks to attempting to be a studio overnight. The five movies they’ve released that have made a total of $38.8 million. Most of that comes from Kathryn Bigelow’s 2017 “Detroit,” which made $17 million and lost much more, and this summer’s “Sorry to Bother You,” which also made around $17 million.
Just recently, Annapurna has backed off of making three films they had in their production ramp. They have to deal with two imminent releases– Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in “Vice,” and Nicole Kidman as a dirty cop in “Destroyer.” These are two BIG releases with Oscar winners and major stars. If either of these two releases goes sideways, that could be it for Annapurna, even with Larry Ellison reportedly trying to fix things.
On a personal note, I never saw “Sisters Brothers.” When I asked for tickets to the premier, I was told there were no more tickets. I never saw “Sorry to Bother You” either. I’ve never received anything about “Vice.” I was lucky to see “Destroyer” only because it was shown in Toronto.
(PS I can’t be the only reviewer or press person to have this sort of problem with Annpurna. In Toronto, I was told not to speak to the cast of unknowns in “If Beale Street Could Talk,” which opens at the end of November and requires all the help in the world to make it work.)
Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant play fabulous duo in crime, Lee Israel and Jack Hock, in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” The film is based on Israel’s memoirs chronicling her exploits creating and forging letters of dead literary celebrities like Noel Coward once her own writing career tanked. McCarthy is unrecognizable in a grey wig and perpetual frown as the 51-year-old dowdy, soused, cranky failed writer in desperate need of cash. Israel’s only friend, Hock is her opposite: charming, flamboyant and talkative, he helps Israel get top dollar for her fakes.
Both actors turned up at the Whitby Hotel Saturday to promote the film. In his most outrageous role since cult classic “Withnail & I,” Grant gives a best supporting Oscar worthy performance on screen and in life is a hoot.
Grant, who’s been married for more than three decades, was asked if having a lot of women in the cast and crew, including director Marielle Heller (“The Diary of a Teenage Girl”) and co-writer Nicole Holofcener (and Jeff Whitty) created a different energy on set?
“I’ll put it like this, it felt like the most [sic] detestosterized, communal, nurturing collaborative environment,” said Grant. “I think because it was such an intimate story and female-centric, whereas the movie that I just come off before that, was called ‘Logan,’ which had a crew of three hundred men with arms thicker than my thighs. I’m not exactly chunky but it was guns and jeeps and cars and cranes. I felt like a dandelion in the wind amongst this macho set, so the contrast was enormous. I mean it was a different kind of movie and people had blades coming out of their hands. People being decapitated in all direction and even the twelve-year-old girl in this was karate killing people with batons so there’s some contrast to the world of Lee Israel and Jack Hock. Does that answer your question?”
Grant told journalists how he found his way into his character.
“My immediate thought was that, I thought what was the essence of what is happening in this story and I thought that like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in ‘The Odd Couple’ and also like Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in ‘Midnight Cowboy,’ is you’ve got two people who are on the fringes of society that are lonely and they’re in New York and they’re struggling. You know, despite all the wealth that you see around you and millions of people, they’re lonely and they’re struggling and I thought that was the basis of their platonic friendship was they’re trying to find a movie reference.”
He added, “And then I thought, because I grew up in Africa, I always see people and try and understand characters as what kind of animal would they be? Just to get a lead in. And I thought she is essentially a porcupine. She’s prickly and private and you’re gonna get hurt if you go in her and I thought Jack was like a Labrador in that he’ll just go up to anybody and lick them into submission.”
Israel didn’t describe Hock in her books so the actor said he didn’t have much to go on.
“He was tall from Portland and blonde and that is as much description as Lee gave about him but what she did say is that he was really good at the scamming because if she reckoned that a letter that she’d done was worth six hundred bucks, he’d come back with two grand. Even when he was trying to cheat off that two grand more money off her. He still was capable, you know he wasn’t good on the math, and he didn’t know who Fanny Brice was, which was bizarre to me, but he obviously had a way of charming people and I thought that was a key to who he was.”
“He lived every day in the moment and I think knowing that you have this time bomb of being HIV positive probably added to that, because it’s like, this is another day,” he said, “and literally today might be my last, so to me, that’s a bit, I wish I could live my life like that but I’m too conservative but it’s very endearing. I’ve known people like that all my life and I’ve liked them and loved them but I wouldn’t give them the keys to my apartment or my car or lend them money.”
photo c2018 Showbiz411 by Paula Schwartz
In his Twitter video rant tonight, Kanye West says he tried to buy back his publishing from Sony ATV. They told him it was worth “eight or nine million” and refused.
Later in the video Kanye brings up the subject again. This may actually be the root of the video’s intent.
“Sony ATV told me I couldn’t buy my publishing. I got the money. So Big Jon, Marty whoever” — he says referring to the company’s outgoing president Marty Bandier and his successor, Jon Platt–” is involved, I need my publishing. I got the money. I’m not gonna say the S word. I’m not Prince. I don’t need to write it on my face.”
That’s interesting since Kanye recently said that Slavery is a choice, and wanted to abolish the 13th amendment.
Prince, of course, famously tried to leave Warner Music in the mid 90s, changed his name to a symbol, re-recorded his albums, and wrote the word “Slave” on his face. The main difference between Prince and Kanye, of course, was talent. Prince actually WROTE hundreds of songs. Kanye has SAMPLED other people’s music. His catalog is largely un-coverable by other artists, whereas Prince has made a fortune from others being able to record his songs. HIS songs. No samples.
When “Yeezus” was being released, I remember talking to the lawyer who was clearing all those samples for Prince. They were EXPENSIVE. So Kanye may be finding his catalog is worth less than he thought.