Monday’s inaugural hoo-hah is no sellout like “The Book of Mormon.” Could be the Book of Obama might just be suffering patriotic fatigue. Planet Earth is worn from gun control, hurricane control, fiscal control, Cabinet members control, war, Iraq, the Middle East, poverty. Not into backslapping and congratulating. Some party officials will actually skip the whole thing.
DC hotels and events are offering discounts, rebates, twofers. Whether they’ll toss in Champagne if you order a meal there, this I don’t know. But that they’re going cheaper than a midlevel bar mitzvah, this I know.
The money laid out is not tax-deductible. And papers to contributors ask: “Who Encouraged You To Make This Donation?” Also, to beef up their Rolodex, “If This Donation Is From an Entity Rather Than an Individual, Provide the Name of That Entity.”
The Benefactors Brunch Reception is a $5,000 sale price. VIP access to the Inaugural Ball is listed as “amazing deal.” Only $1,500. General admission — $500. Bringing a partner’s another $250. Lincoln’s swearing-in has to have cost more. To squat in the Parade’s VIP section, it’s a lousy $150. If willing to plop in the everybody’s-a-peasant section, it’s possible the Oval Office will personally pay you a few dollars.
TODAY, the Barbizon Hotel, Patrick Meyer celebrates publishing his book “Steve Jobs and the World of Mobile”. . . Deena Cortese of “Jersey Shore” did her 26th birthday in class-A style. At Lips 56th Street drag show . . . If you’re not “Annie’d” out, Andrea McArdle’s singing the show’s songs at 54 Below . . . Park Avenue Armory, Jan. 31’s opening of the Winter Antiques Show will include stuff by Nate Berkus and Celerie Kemble.
DUSTIN Hoffman directing a movie? What could be better? It’s “Quartet.” It stars “Downton Abbey’s” arch snob Dame Maggie Smith. It just opened.
“My first time directing,” he told me. “I’ve developed my own stuff over years and have a trunkful of undeveloped scripts. I read this flying to LA. I was a little nervous. I remember Spielberg telling me, ‘First day I start work on every movie I ever make, I throw up.’
“Counting numbers on the amount of movies made versus the amount that’s successful, it’s terrifying. Hollywood doesn’t care how good a film is. Only about making money. My hope is that in the middle of this nobody’s eyes glaze over and they turn to someone and say, ‘Want some popcorn?’
“I went to one bathroom before a picture’s end, and its director comes in. What’s Garry Marshall doing there? The best part’s coming up. He says, ‘I know but I had to go. I’m on medications, and they don’t last 90 minutes.’ So now I’m getting like him. A member of that elderly generation. If I’m lucky, I either develop more passion and energy or end up going to the can every 90 minutes like he does.
“I hope to direct more. There have been overseas offers. ‘Quartet’s’ gotten good notices, gone up 60 percent to the Top 10 so that’s good. And I didn’t bother with auditions. That’s an artificial experience. I hired who I wanted.
“Soft, sweet, sentimental, humane Maggie Smith calls herself the Acid Queen. We had a great experience. I didn’t know her. We met once at an Albee play in London. Tom Courtenay, who’s in this, worried, ‘What if she doesn’t like me?’ But, please, that she’s ‘tough on directors’ is bulls – – t. She’s extraordinary.
“ ‘Quartet’ deals with seniors, and I know that life. Having money, you can at least bring the hospital home. My mother-in-law’s in her 80s, in a wheelchair. We take her to dinner, then she goes to her home with a caregiver. The little finger still wears a ring her late husband, Billy, gave her.
“Listen, I’m happy I can still get up in the morning and work . . . even though I still can’t do that damn cellphone.”
ATTENTION: Heritage Auctions is peddling baseball memorabilia Feb. 23. From Hall of Fame outfielder Earle Combs’ collection, “The Finest 1927 Yankees Team Signed Baseball on Earth”; 20 signatures including Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, manager Miller Huggins — “at least $200,000.” For Gehrig’s 1930 signed baseball, $100,000. For the Babe’s, also $100 thou. Oct. 8, 1956, Don Larsen threw “the only perfect game in World Series history.” Previously owned by Charlie Sheen, who might need to raise cash for some of his trash, the signed baseball can be yours for a chintzy paltry bargain basement 20 grand.
All together there are 100 tchotchkes.
CELINE Dion says she’s scared of sex, drugs and hard partying . . . Following that “Brangelina” nickname, bandmates called kindergarten colleague Harry Styles “Haylor.” His 26 minutes with Taylor the Swift now kaput, they’ve stopped . . . Amanda Seyfried admits having taken antidepressants. Olivia Munn confesses to a struggle with anxiety. It ain’t easy making green.
A CHELSEA area drugstore had a sign reading: “Flu shots given while you wait.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.