Back when movies featured stories not car crashes, when studios were run by filmmakers not corporations, when stars flashed Balenciaga not body parts, David Picker ran United Artists, Paramount, Columbia, Lorimar, started Woody Allen’s film career, brought 007 to the screen, first signed The Beatles movies, etc., etc.
October brings his book “Musts, Maybes, and Nevers: A Book About the Movies.” You like name-dropping? From Abbott and Costello to Frank Zappa, he drops maybe 1,500 names.
He remembers Richard Gere’s first starring role. A new kid on the block named Kris Kristofferson. Rock-star romps like with Mick Jagger’s wasted ladyfriend. 1985’s Warren Beatty–Dustin Hoffman A-1 bomb “Ishtar” because production, months overlong, cost “millions and millions,” because the director picked a desert location with dunes, then decided no dunes, then had to flatten the damn dunes.
Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” where Daniel Day-Lewis met his future bride, Miller’s daughter. He remembers Day-Lewis’ work ethic. Being alone. Lunching alone. Yet, on the set, manually helping the crew build his character’s house.
It’s a great read.
New Yorker Picker on friendly airplane seatmate strangers who ask, “So what do you do for a living?” stops the conversation with: “I’m a dentist.”
Stringer: family first
Scott Stringer: “It’s challenging to run a citywide race. My wife and child come first. Many mothers hold two jobs. There’s pressure in providing for a family. Worrying about education. Paying the rent. You worry about care yet can’t always afford baby care.
“I’m equipped to be comptroller because I’m aware of financial problems. I know about working people struggling.
“I understand the city needs infrastructure, borough transportation, bus lanes, that Second Avenue subway, which will finish when my infant becomes mayor. We need a system that attracts business so people come from all over and want to move here. I know we mustn’t increase fares. But we need hospitals, nursing homes. To lose the middle class, we lose the heart of the city.”
Then, sitting in his living room, he played with baby Max.
Calling these people out
Julianna Margulies on rodent-face non-mayor Weiner: “The gift that just keeps on giving” . . . Can’t nobody learn no English? Ch. 1 reporter on Sunday’s Dominican parade: “The music is louder than me.” Nice . . . August’s The Real Deal magazine (which recently wrote I’d died) scoops that Judge Judy “unloaded” her Sherry Netherland co-op. Wrong. Sold looong ago. It said the apartment “spans two floors.” Wrong. It was a simplex. Also I haven’t died.
Magic + art = doc
MAGICIANS Penn & Teller — Penn’s last name is Jillette, Teller’s just Teller — are going beyond rabbits disappearing into doves. An interest in art and the uncanny led to investigating the 1600s Dutch artist Jan Vermeer. Result? A nonfiction documentary.
Teller directed. Penn produced. Maybe a month ago they called Sony Pictures Classics. Flying from Vegas to an NY screening room, they showed it to co-presidents Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, who pronounced it “amazing stuff.” Next day this audience of two bought it.
It shows how Vermeer, 150 years before photography was invented, created lenses and mirrors. “Tim’s Vermeer” opens next year.
Restaurant decision on serving the customer city water or bottled water. The waiter says: “We once called it ‘Dinkins’ water.’ Now it’s ‘Bloomberg’s water.’ ” Said the classy financial analyst customer Karren Kurrasch: “I don’t care what it is as long as it’s not Weiner’s water.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.