Tonight Woody Harrelson — Oscar nominee for Best Actor, Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actor, Emmy winner, five-time Emmy nominee, Golden Globe nominee, TV star, movie star, Sigma Chi frat, college degree in bachelor of arts — premieres off-Broadway’s comedy “Bullet for Adolf.”
So, to put it graciously, whatthehell’s he know about writing and directing stagecraft?
“Listen, I’ve spent time in the theater. I was involved during high school and college. My first professional job in the ’80s was understudying two roles in Neil Simon’s Broadway play ‘Biloxi Blues.’ I watched Matthew Broderick work. I got to see director Gene Saks do his thing. I’ve read a lot of plays.”
Fine, fine. Down, boy. Sorry I asked.
“The play come about because I got this idea. Summer of ’83, working in construction, I met a guy. Frankie Hyman. Months later I’m thinking about all those colorful characters there. Frankie, who’d never done any writing, and I would talk about them, and so he co-wrote this with me.
“What happened was, we’d sit and talk. Throw out memories. Ideas. Then a scene. We tried thoughts out on one another. One of us would finish the other’s idea. I’d hold the pen and paper. We took a long time writing because it’s based on real people.
“First act’s last scene, my favorite, a monster, is 22 pages. Almost 30 pages. Lots of stuff going on. Choreography. Blocking. The way it moves that scene took forever for us to finish.
“What we did was, we tried out the play years ago in Toronto. It went pretty well and gave me the confidence to direct it. So now we decided to open here.
“Look, I live in Maui, Hawaii. I have children. I’m financially comfortable. Few years ago I asked a bricklayer is he rich. He said, ‘I have 13 kids. They’re all rich. They’re alive, aren’t they?’ So, as far as life goes I’m lucky as hell.”
The play features Midwestern rubes with uncertain futures meeting a slick Northeasterner with a certain bad past. Things disappear and things happen. For tonight’s opening, Woody’s “about as nervous as you can be. Truth is, I’m panicked. Its fate will be decided not by me but by New York critics. I’ve met New Yorkers. Besides different vantage points, they’re cool and friendly. But like most things, I’ve got to convince myself to just let it go.”
And to calm himself right before the opening at New World Stages? He was grabbing a plane. “I’m visiting a buddy in prison.”
Why now?
“Because he can’t come to see me.”
NOBODY lets Marilyn Monroe rest. Sept. 12 gets director Liz Garbus’ doc “Love, Marilyn.” The usual never-before-seen personal papers, diaries, letters, etc. Featured, some of whom will dress Toronto’s Film Festival, are Elizabeth Banks, Lindsay Lohan, Evan Rachel Wood, Uma Thurman, Paul Giamatti, Viola Davis, Jeremy Piven, Ellen Burstyn, Adrien Brody, Marisa Tomei, Glenn Close, Jennifer Ehle, F. Murray Abraham, Janet McTeer, Oliver Platt, David Strathairn.
WE lost Marvin Hamlisch. What can I recall? Let me count the ways. My lifetime friend told me he was “busy writing another musical.” Years back, Carole Bayer Sager, “scared to perform in public after such time away” told me Marvin was creating her act. He and I joked that, despite his earnings, his fame, he bought every suit at one Pittsburgh haberdashery. And Thanksgiving I asked where’s he going. Answer: “The in-laws. Where else? You have to cut your losses.” (Obit and Michael Riedel’s column: Pages 14 and 15.)
KRISTEN Stewart. Beautiful, talented. Never met her but we did a telephone interview. Stop piling on smart, honest, sweet Kristen. Her behavior’s the culture of today’s heights of low. Like Hollywood’s on-screen filth — four-letter words, bloodletting action, horror, nudity, lewdity, erotica, psychotica — and off-screen filth — 10-minute marriages, divorces, remarriages, unmarriages, babies without wedlock, drugs, orgies. She didn’t create it. She grew up in it.
She’s repentant. Did wrong. Handled herself poorly. Hurt people. She’s sorry. She’s young. She made a mistake. Who hasn’t? Leave her alone. Interested in beating up someone? Go after that itchy philandering garter-snake husband.
GLORIA Vanderbilt showing collages, paintings, whatever Sept. 12, NY Design Center . . . “Central Park: An Anthology” by Andrew Blauner, intro by ex-commish Adrian Benepe . . . Also “Fifty Shames of Earl Grey,” a parody job by Fanny Merkin a k a Andrew Shaffer . . . Also “The Twitter Diaries.” Explains twit phrases: “Banging on” means “nagging,” “bit of fluff” is sex partner, “muppet” = “incompetent.”
TARRYTOWN’s Violet Toth Manca says she saw a sceptic tank truck emblazoned with the sign: “Yesterday’s Meals on Wheels.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.