DIRECTOR ARTHUR PENN DIES

ARTHUR PENN, the stage, television and motion picture director whose revolutionary treatment of sex and violence in the film BONNIE & CLYDE transformed the American film industry, died on Tuesday night at his home in Manhattan, the day after his 88th birthday.

The cause was congestive heart failure, according to his son MATTHEW.

A pioneering director of live television drama in the 1950s and a Broadway powerhouse in the 1960s, Mr. Penn developed an intimate, spontaneous and physically oriented method of directing actors that allowed their work to register across a range of mediums.

In 1957 he directed William Gibson’s television play THE MIRACLE WORKER for the CBS series Playhouse 90 and earned EMMY nominations for himself, his writer and his star TERESA WRIGHT.

In 1959 he restaged THE MIRACLE WORKER for Broadway and won TONY AWARDS for himself, his writer and his star ANNE BANCROFT.

And in 1962 he directed the film version of the Gibson text, capturing the BEST ACTRESS OSCAR for Ms. Bancroft, the BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS ACADEMY AWARD for her costar PATTY DUKE and nominations for writing and directing.

Mr. Penn’s direction may have also changed American history.

He advised Senator John F. Kennedy during his watershed television debates with Richard M. Nixon in 1960 (and directed the broadcast of the third debate). Mr. Penn’s instructions to Mr. Kennedy — to look directly into the camera and keep his responses brief and pithy — helped give him an aura of confidence and calm that created a vivid contrast to Nixon, his more experienced but less telegenic Republican rival.

But it was as a film director that Mr. Penn left his mark on American culture, most indelibly with BONNIE & CLYDE.

“Arthur Penn brought the sensibility of 60s European art films to American movies,” the writer/director PAUL SCHRADER said.

“He paved the way for the new generation of American directors who came out of film schools.”

Many of the now classic films of what was branded the New American Cinema of the 1970s — like FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA’S THE GODFATHER — would have been unthinkable without BONNIE & CLYDE to lead the way.

“A society would be wise to pay attention to the people who do not belong if it wants to find out…where it’s failing,” Mr. Penn said.

Loosely based on the story of two minor gangsters of the 1930s – BONNIE PARKER and CLYDE BARROW – BONNIE & CLYDE was conceived by its two novice screenwriters, ROBERT BENTON and DAVID NEWMAN, as an homage to the rebellious sensibility and disruptive style of French New Wave films like JEAN LUC GODARD’S BREATHLESS and FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT’S SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER.

In Mr. Penn’s hands, it became something even more dangerous and innovative: a sympathetic portrait of two barely articulate criminals, played by WARREN BEATTY and newcomer FAYE DUNAWAY, that disconcertingly mixed sex, violence and comedy, set to a bouncy bluegrass score by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

Not only was the film sexually explicit in ways unseen in Hollywood since the imposition of the Production Code in 1934 — when Bonnie stroked Clyde’s gun, the symbolism was unmistakable — it was violent in ways that had never been seen before. Audiences gasped when a comic bank robbery climaxed with Clyde’s shooting a bank teller in the face and were stunned when the glamorous outlaws died in a torrent of bullets.

Reporting on the film’s premiere on the opening night of the International Film Festival of Montreal in 1967, BOSLEY CROWTHER the chief film critic for THE NEW YORK TIMES was appalled, describing BONNIE & CLYDE as “callous and callow” and a “slap happy colour film charade.”

Worse, the public seemed to love it.

BONNIE & CLYDE was initially released in August of 1967 and then rereleased early in 1968 in response to unflagging interest. It appalled the old and fascinated the young, widening a generational divide not only between audiences, but with critics as well.

“Just to show how delirious these festival audiences can be,” Mr. Crowther wrote, “it was wildly received with gales of laughter and given a terminal burst of applause.”

Similar reactions by other major critics followed when the film opened in the United States a few weeks later. The film, promoted by WARNER BROTHERS with a memorable tag line — They’re young. They’re in love. And they kill people. — floundered at first but soon found an enthusiastic audience among younger filmgoers and won the support of a new generation of critics.

“A milestone in the history of American movies,” wrote ROGER EBERT in The Chicago Sun Times.

PAULINE KAEL, writing in THE NEW YORKER, described it as an “excitingly American movie.”

“How do you make a good movie in this country without being jumped on?”

“The accusation that the beauty of movie stars makes the antisocial acts of their characters dangerously attractive is the kind of contrived argument we get from people who are bothered by something and clutching at straws,” Ms. Kael wrote.

BONNIE & CLYDE received 10 OSCAR nominations but won only two (for Burnett Guffey’s cinematography and Estelle Parson’s supporting performance).

That outcome reflected the Hollywood establishment’s ambivalence over a film that seemed to point the way out of the creative paralysis that had set in after the end of the studio system while betraying the values — good taste and moral clarity — that the studios held most dear.

But the floodgates had been opened: BONNIE & CLYDE was followed by a host of other youth oriented, taboo breaking films that made mountains of money for Hollywood.

Mr. Penn was perceived as a major film artist on the European model, opening the way for a group of star directors — including TERRENCE MALICK and HAL ASHBY — who were able to work with comparative artistic freedom through the next decade.

The film generation had arrived.

ARTHUR PENN was born on SEPTEMBER 27, 1922 in Philadelphia. His father, a watchmaker, and his mother, a nurse, divorced when he was 3 and Arthur and his older brother IRVING (who would achieve fame as a photographer), went to live with their mother in New York and New Jersey, changing homes and schools frequently as she struggled to make a living.

Mr. Penn traced his affinity for alienated heroes to a traumatic childhood. He once said that Truffaut’s 400 BLOWS “was so much like my own childhood it really stunned me.”

At age 14, Mr. Penn returned to Philadelphia to live with his ailing father and help him run his watch repair shop.

“He was an excellent mechanic…His hands were magical,” Mr. Penn recalled.

“But he was an evasive man for someone to try to make contact with. I think I’m like him in some ways. I’m not the most available of men – emotionally or personally.”

He was no filmgoer as a child; books and baseball mattered more. Mr. Penn was frightened by a horror movie when he was 5 and said he did not see another movie until his teens, when ORSON WELLES’ CITIZEN KANE ”staggered” him.

Along with ORSON WELLES and CHARLIE CHAPLIN, Mr. Penn greatly admired AKIRA KUROSAWA and the French New Wave directors.

He was known for allowing actors to improvise — and getting a wide range of expression from them in return. He believed words are to the theatre as action is to film: “A look – a simple look – will do it.”

He joined the Army in 1943 and, while stationed at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, organized a theater troupe with his fellow soldiers; later, while stationed in Paris, he performed with the Soldiers Show Company.

After the war he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to attend the unconventional Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where his classmates included John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Buckminster Fuller.

He went on to study at the Universities of Perugia and Florence in Italy, returning to the United States in 1948.

Intrigued by the new psychologically realistic school of acting that had grown out of the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski — broadly known as the Method — he studied with THE ACTORS STUDIO in New York and with Stanislavski’s rebellious disciple Michael Chekhov in Los Angeles.

Back in New York, Mr. Penn landed a job as a floor manager at NBC’s newly opened television studios. In 1953 an old Army buddy Fred Coe gave him a job as a director on The Gulf Playhouse, also known as First Person, an experimental dramatic series in which the actors addressed the camera directly.

The series, broadcast live, introduced Mr. Penn to writers who would make their names in the television drama of the 1950s, among them PADDY CHAYEFSKY and HORTON FOOTE.

As Mr. Coe moved on to the expanded formats of The Philco/Goodyear Television Playhouse and Playhouse 90, he took Mr. Penn with him. His Playhouse 90 production of Mr. Gibson’s THE MIRACLE WORKER, starring PATRICIA McCORMACK as HELEN KELLER and Ms. Wright as the blind girl’s determined teacher ANNIE SULLIVAN, was shown on February 7, 1957 and earned glowing reviews for Mr. Gibson and Mr. Penn.

Their television success allowed Mr. Penn and Mr. Gibson to return to the original arena of their ambitions: Broadway. With Mr. Coe producing, they mounted Mr. Gibson’s play TWO FOR THE SEESAW, about a Midwestern businessperson (HENRY FONDA) contemplating an adventure with a New York bohemian (ANNE BANCROFT).

Opening in January of 1958, it was an immediate success.

Sensing themselves on a roll, Mr. Penn and Mr. Coe decided to tackle Hollywood. With Mr. Coe producing, Mr. Penn directed his first film THE LEFT HANDED GUN (1958), for WARNER BROTHERS. Based on a GORE VIDAL television play, the project was an extension of the Playhouse 90 aesthetic: a low budget black and white western about a troubled inarticulate young man (PAUL NEWMAN, in a performance stamped with ACTORS STUDIO technique) who happened to be Billy The Kid.

As the critic Robin Wood wrote in a 1969 book about Mr. Penn, THE LEFT HANDED GUN provides “a remarkably complete thematic exposition of Penn’s work.”

Here all ready is the theme of the immature unstable outsider who resorts to violence when rejected by an uncaring establishment — a configuration that Mr. Penn would return to again and again in his work.

Unfortunately, the film earned mediocre reviews and quickly sank from view. But Mr. Penn had a backup plan. Returning to New York, he mounted THE MIRACLE WORKER for Broadway with ANNE BANCROFT as ANNIE SULLIVAN and Ms. Duke as HELEN KELLER.

Mr. Penn’s highly physical approach made the show a sensation and the production ran for 719 performances.

During that run Mr. Penn found time to stage three more hits: LILLIAN HELLMAN’S TOYS IN THE ATTIC, AN EVENING WITH MIKE NICHOLS & ELAINE MAY (the Broadway debut for that comedy team) and ALL THE WAY HOME, an adaptation of James Agee’s novel A DEATH IN THE FAMILY.

When Hollywood beckoned again, Mr. Penn returned in strength in 1962 to direct the film version of THE MIRACLE WORKER, which became a popular and critical success.

But he was dismissed from his next project THE TRAIN after a few days of filming by its temperamental star BURT LANCASTER.

Mr. Penn’s subsequent film MICKEY ONE (1965), an absurdist drama about a nightclub comedian (Mr. Beatty) on the run from mobsters, wore its European art film ambitions on its sleeve and baffled most American critics, though it was admired by the iconoclastic young critics of Cahiers du Cinéma, the French magazine that championed the New Wave.

Mr. Penn had another frustrating experience with THE CHASE (1966), a multi character, morally complex drama set in a Texas town where the sheriff (MARLON BRANDO) is on the lookout for a local boy (ROBERT REDFORD) who has escaped from prison. Adapted by LILLIAN HELLMAN from a HORTON FOOTE play, the drama was taken away from Mr. Penn and re edited by its producer SAM SPIEGEL.

But even in its mutilated form, THE CHASE remains one of Mr. Penn’s most personal and feverishly creative works.

An embittered Mr. Penn returned to Broadway, where he staged the thriller WAIT UNTIL DARK with LEE REMICK and ROBERT DUVALL. But he eventually returned to Hollywood, summoned by Mr. Beatty to take over the direction of a project originally offered to Truffaut.

“Frankly, I wasn’t all that certain I wanted to make another film,” Mr. Penn wrote in an essay for Lester D. Friedman’s 2000 anthology ARTHUR PENN’S BONNIE & CLYDE.

“And if I were to do another film, I felt it should be a story with a broader social theme than a flick about two 30s bank robbers whose pictures I remembered as a couple of self publicizing hoods holding guns, plastered across the front page of The Daily News.”

But Mr. Beatty, who had an option on the property, persuaded Mr. Penn to join the project with promises of autonomy and the rare privilege of having the final cut.

Working with the screenwriters, Mr. Penn eliminated a sexual triangle among Bonnie, Clyde and their disciple C. W. Moss, a composite character, that he felt was too sophisticated for the characters — “farmers or children of farmers, bumpkins most of them,” Mr. Penn wrote.

“We talked and moved in the direction of a simpler tale,” he added, “one of narcissism, of bravura and, at least from Clyde’s point of view, of sexual timidity.” They had also settled on a tone.

“It was to start as a jaunty little spree in crime, then suddenly turn serious and finally arrive at a point that was irreversible,” Mr. Penn wrote.

After the grand success of BONNIE & CLYDE, Mr. Penn had his choice of Hollywood projects. But he decided to make a small personal film, very much in the spirit of the American independent cinema that would emerge in the 1980s.

ALICE’S RESTAURANT (1969) revisited many of the social outsider themes of BONNIE & CLYDE – but in a low key, gently skeptical, nonviolent manner. Starring ARLO GUTHRIE and based on his wry freewheeling song about being turned down for the draft because he had once been fined for littering, the film stands as one of Mr. Penn’s most engaging works, a warm and deeply felt miniature.

Next came the epic ambitions of LITTLE BIG MAN (1970), a sprawling, ironic, antiwestern that tried to explain American imperialism through the abstract figure of Jack Crabb (DUSTIN HOFFMAN), the sole (though fictional) non American Indian survivor of The Battle Of Little Bighorn, as he bumbled through a glumly revisionist version of the Old West.

“Originality is filtered out like tar is filtered out of cigarettes,” Mr. Penn once complained.

“I have not had a lot of success with the suits — or the dresses. Executives are executives. They’re going to interfere as much as they can.”

“(Little Big Man) didn’t happen until I had so much clout I sort of made it happen.”

The director considered LITTLE BIG MAN his greatest success.

After that, Mr. Penn mostly laid low before returning in 1975 with the modest thriller NIGHT MOVES.

Starring GENE HACKMAN as a Hollywood private detective who loses himself on a case in the Florida Keys, the film made explicit the existential despair that had long permeated American film noir, ending on a daring note of irresolution.

But audiences were losing patience with daring notes, flocking instead to the popcorn pleasures of STEVEN SPIELBERG’S JAWS, summer’s runaway hit in 1975. Suddenly Mr. Penn’s kind of artistically ambitious, personal filmmaking was out of style.

He returned to Broadway, where he staged a pair of successes: Larry Gelbart’s Sly Fox and Mr. Gibson’s Golda.

Mr. Penn’s subsequent film career was one of violent ups and downs. A reunion with Brando for THE MISSOURI BREAKS (1976) yielded a surreal western with moments of brilliance but a meandering tone. With FOUR FRIENDS (1981), Mr. Penn returned to the subjects of youthful uncertainty and social upheaval.

He seemed less committed to TARGET (1985), a paranoid political thriller with Mr. Hackman and Matt Dillon that uneasily matched a father/son conflict with conventional suspense and DEAD OF WINTER (1987), a partial remake of Joseph H. Lewis’ 1945 gothic thriller MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS.

“I just like to flex my muscles every once in a while and do something relatively mindless,” Mr. Penn told RICHARD SCHICKEL.

It came as a pleasant surprise, then, when Mr. Penn uncorked the 1989 independent production PENN & TELLER GET KILLED, a black comedy in which those two magicians are pursued by a serial killer. Full of wild jokes, bizarre reversals and extravagant gore, this tiny film bristles with a youthful spirit of experimentation.

A dutiful drama of South African apartheid produced by Showtime, INSIDE (1996), would be Mr. Penn’s last theatrically released film.

In his last years Mr. Penn returned to television, serving as an executive producer on several episodes of LAW & ORDER – a series on which his son MATTHEW worked as a director. He also helmed an episode of 100 CENTRE STREET.

One of his final works for the theater was the 2002 Broadway production FORTUNE’S FOOL, an adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s 1848 play. True to Mr. Penn’s form, it won TONY AWARDS for its stars ALAN BATES and FRANK LANGELLA.

Mr. Penn met his wife of 54 years, the actor PEGGY MAURER, when he auditioned her for a television drama in the 1950s.

Besides Ms. Maurer and his son MATTHEW, Mr. Penn is also survived by a daughter MOLLY PENN and four grandsons.

Mr. Penn’s brother IRVING died in 2009.

Both GENE HACKMAN and WARREN BEATTY talked openly of their admiration for Mr. Penn.

“I loved working with Arthur,” Mr. Hackman said in a statement.

“He had his own clear vision, but he was really excited to see what you could bring to a scene, every take. You could feel him over there, just by the camera, pulling for you. However rough and tough his films are, you can always sense his humanity in them.”

Mr. Beatty fondly remembered working with the director: “I will always treasure the singularly honest, joyful, adventurous intelligence of Arthur Penn both as a collaborator and as a loving friend.”

Throughout his career, Mr. Penn never lost his flair for the spontaneous, his remarkable ability to capture an emotional moment in all its pulsing ambiguity and messy vitality.

“I don’t storyboard,” Mr. Penn explained to an audience at THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE in the 1970s, referring to the practice of sketching out every shot in a film before production begins.

“I guess it dates back to my days in live television, where there was no possibility of storyboarding and everything was shot right on the spot — on the air, as we say — at the moment we were transmitting. I prefer to be open to what the actors do, how they interact to the given situation. So many surprising things happen on the set and I have the feeling that storyboarding might tend to close your mind to the accidental.”

As a boy, Mr. Penn had little success learning the watchmaker’s trade from his father, who died without having seen any of his son’s films.

“He went to his grave despairing I would never find my way in the world and the movies rescued me.”

BILLY CONNOLLY: THE MASTER AT PLAY

FROM THE CANADIAN PRESS

I’ve adored BILLY CONNOLLY forever. He’s not only one of the funniest men on the planet, but he also possesses an enormous amount of talent in a variety of other areas.

He’s a superb dramatic actor. If you’ve seen MRS. BROWN (with the great JUDI DENCH), then you know what I’m talking about.

If you haven’t, find it.

Animated powerhouse Pixar made headlines last week for naming its first female director. But Scottish comedian BILLY CONNOLLY poked a bit of fun at the milestone in an interview Tuesday.

He will lend his voice talents to BRAVE, a film about a princess who defies her parents by pursuing an interest in archery. The film — Pixar’s 13th — will be written and directed by Brenda Chapman.

But BILLY admitted that he wasn’t really aware of the landmark.

“It didn’t dawn on me for ages because animated directors have always made me laugh,” he stated during an interview Tuesday at a luxurious Toronto hotel.

“The first one I did was Pocahontas and I said: ‘How do you direct an animated movie?’ Do you say to Donald Duck, ‘Right. Here’s what I want.’? How do you direct Donald Duck?”

“Who exactly do you direct? Do you direct the artist? Do you direct the sound guy? Who gets directed first?”

“So it didn’t become a matter of male or female to me. I just found (animation) directors absurd and immensely likable.”

BILLY, who will kick off an 11 city Canadian stand up tour NOVEMBER 2 in Hamilton, is becoming a voice acting veteran.

In addition to POCAHONTAS, he loaned his talents to the 2006 smash OPEN SEASON and its straight to video sequel as well as a few other smaller projects.

“(Animation people) are wonderful people,” BILLY commented.

“They truly are artistically driven. They never say, ‘I always wanted to direct.’ They’ve always arrived at it from some weird angle within the field.”

While BILLY didn’t realize that Brenda Chapman was Pixar’s first female director, he said that they get along well.

“She’s a lovely woman and she buys me cigars.”

And he’s optimistic that the film, due out in 2012, will live up to the lofty standards created by Pixar’s roster of critically acclaimed box office smashes, which includes TOY STORY 3, UP and Wall-E.

“It’s good fun. The rehearsals have been really funny. Sometimes you worry that it might not come up the lens. But if they’re animated, it’s not going to come up the lens. There is no lens.”

“They’re terribly good at what they do.”

EDITOR SALLY MENKE DEAD AT 56

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

SALLY MENKE was a film editor best known for her long association with the director QUENTIN TARANTINO.

She worked on kinetic features like RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION, JACKIE BROWN, the KILL BILL movies and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS.

Ms. Menke was found dead earlier today in the Beachwood Canyon section of the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles.

She was 56.

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES reported that Ms. Menke went hiking on Monday morning and her friends contacted the police later in the day when she failed to return home. Her body was found Tuesday morning at the bottom of a ravine, not far from a parking lot where her car was located.

Ed Winter, the assistant chief of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, told THE TIMES that the office was trying to determine if the recent heat wave had been a factor in Ms. Menke’s death.

Ms. Menke wrote in a 2009 essay for THE GUARDIAN about how she and Mr. Tarantino first worked together on his debut feature.

“I got in touch and he sent me this script for a thing called Reservoir Dogs and I just thought it was amazing. It floored me.”

She added: “I was hiking up in Canada on a remote mountain in Banff when I saw a phone box and I stopped to call L.A. and they confirmed I’d got the gig. I let out a yell that echoed around the mountain.”

In addition to her work with Mr. Tarantino, Ms. Menke also edited Billy Bob Thornton’s ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, for which she also served as an executive producer.

Discussing their collaboration some time ago, Mr. Tarantino said: “I write by myself. But when it comes to the editing I write with Sally.”

EVAN RACHEL WOOD: THE GLAMOROUS NONCONFORMIST

Playing everything from a bold vampire queen in True Blood to a bronzed vixen in GUCCI’S latest fragrance campaign, style chameleon EVAN RACHEL WOOD is ready to surprise her fans at every turn.

“I have fun playing with makeup,” she told PEOPLE.

The actor shared many of her favorite style tips, including the secret to keeping her porcelain visage flawless: “I am SPF crazy. I have sunscreen in the door of my car. I have sunscreen in my purse.”

Sun protection aside, the self professed Sephora fan likes to have fun pushing the beauty boundaries “to see how far I can go,” experimenting with everything from ultrasmoky eyes (she’s a fan of Stila Smudge Pots) to her tattoos.

EVAN credits her daring self expression to growing up with a “very artistic family” that encouraged her to be different.

“I try and surround myself with people who just aren’t afraid to be who they are and aren’t going to judge me for doing anything I’m doing.”

The redhead’s latest role as the face for GUCCI’S GUILTY scent gives her the platform to do just that.

“I love [the] idea of the Gucci woman being this take no prisoners, full throttle, is going to do what she wants to do [woman]. I think you can be just as tough in a pair of heels if you’re in control of it.”

KATIE CASSIDY: THE NEW STYLE STAR

GOSSIP GIRL actor LEIGHTON MEESTER, who recently expressed interest in starting her own clothing line, already has one customer waiting in the wings: new costar KATIE CASSIDY.

“I’d buy it,” the actor told PEOPLE at W magazine’s September issue celebration at NYC’s SAKS FIFTH AVENUE recently.

“She has really good taste. I think she‘d be a great designer.”

In the meantime, KATIE will continue to admire her castmate’s killer wardrobe: “I’ve seen her closet. It’s pretty amazing. She has some really good clothing.”

Since joining television’s most stylish cast, the former MELROSE PLACE actor has begun to develop some major fashion cred of her own, sitting front row at DIANE VON FURSTENBERG and JASON WU alongside glamour aficionados like DIANE KRUGER during New York Fashion Week.

And it’s paying off: GOSSIP GIRL’S newest star shone at the Saks event in a gold DIANE VON FURSTENBERG shift dress with an Alice + Olivia cardigan. She credited the CW hit for its fashion influence.

“I’m learning about fashion and I find myself knowing more about what I should wear. The whole show is very chic and the clothes are unbelievably beautiful. It’s like a girl’s playground.”

THE BIG BANG THEORY: 15 REASONS TO LOVE IT

I never have time to watch television. But experiencing something that’s worthwhile is a leap I can make.

THE BIG BANG THEORY is one of the most hilarious shows on TV right now. It features an awesome cast that plays off each other magnificently: JIM PARSONS, KALEY CUOCO, JOHNNY GALECKI, SIMON HELBERG and KUNAL NAYYAR.

EW has a gallery which showcases 15 different reasons why TBBT is time exceedingly well spent.

For the whole damn thing, please go here

THE RICHNESS OF AUTUMN

My mom was an exceptionally wise woman.

She always said that I should let people think what they want and just do whatever I have to do.

But that’s not likely to happen.

Here’s what I’ve been pondering this particular Friday…

My mama also told me that you were known by the company that you keep. She felt that I would be better off spending my time with a certain kind of guy. She strongly favoured gentlemen. Being treated with respect, generosity and kindness is all too rare.

Especially these days. She was absolutely right.

I think that dudes should be gracious when a girl that they desire chooses someone else. You should be glad that she’s fulfilled and in a wonderful place instead of acting like spoiled children. All this bitching and moaning I keep hearing from various quarters is working on my last nerve.

So you’re not jazzed? That’s too bad. I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s my life. I am very very happy. I intend on staying that way.

If you’re going to act annoyed about what I write and the amount of sexual references involved, you’re complaining for nothing. Anyone that would have notable disdain for that obviously hasn’t been thinking while they were here.

That’s like saying it’s too hot in LA.

When I was in my early 20s, I heard something that I never forgot. A woman said that you would never be able to have what you really wanted in life unless you knew exactly what it was that you desired.

Everyone grows up with the idea of what his or her perfect mate will be like. For me, it boils down to five essential qualities, some distracting physical essentials and a number of treasured commonalities.

That’s all I’m going to say. But I feel incredibly fortunate.

I learned long ago (by the age of five, actually) that you can’t please everybody. So you may as well please yourself.

Anyway…

I saw THE BLACK KEYS when they opened for BECK in 2003. They were really good. But with our Friday musical highlight – TIGHTEN UP – they have ascended to the rock & roll pantheon.

It’s a modern classic.

Great video too. It shows exactly how far we have evolved from the playground. Apparently not a whole hell of a lot.

I believe fervently in giving credit where credit is due. So I’d like to thank the citizens of New Jersey (even the former residents) and the awesome people at The Georgia Straight.

They’ll know why.

That’s it for now. I’m gone for the day.

But when you think of me, visualize me sitting on the porch on the ol plantation in a glorious green gown, sipping lemonade, listening to SON OF A PREACHER MAN by DUSTY SPRINGFIELD on an endless loop and cleaning my shotgun.

SCARLETT O’HARA never understood what she needed until it was too damn late.

I all ready know.

Have a fabulous weekend, my darling readers.

But now it’s time for me to exit. Stage left…

JULIANNE MOORE’S FRECKLEFACE STRAWBERRY BECOMES OFF BROADWAY MUSICAL

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Freckles shouldn’t be any kind of a drawback for JULIANNE. Everyone that I know thinks that she’s incredibly beautiful…and I totally agree.

JULIANNE MOORE is tickled pink about a glowing early review of a new musical based on her FRECKLEFACE STRAWBERRY children’s book.

Then again, it was from her daughter.

The actor recently took 8 year old LIV to a performance of FRECKLEFACE STRAWBERRY: THE MUSICAL and was delighted to discover that she didn’t have to bribe her daughter with sweets to stay still.

“When kids watch shows, they’re not very quiet. Usually when I bring my kids to a musical, whenever there’s a ballad, they ask for more candy. She didn’t turn to me once.”

The off Broadway musical is adapted from JULIANNE’S bestselling adventures of a 7 year old relentlessly teased by her schoolmates for having bright red hair and freckles, something the actor knows a lot about.

“I think what they did is absolutely charming. It’s not so easy. I mean, it’s a picture book. It’s a small book. To make it into a show that lasts an hour and a half and maintain the message — a very simple childhood message — I think is pretty phenomenal.”

Now showing at New World Stages, the show features a cast of seven adult professionals and officially opens OCTOBER 1. The music and lyrics were written by GARY KUPPER, with a book by him and ROSE CAIOLA.

ROSE CAIOLA, who runs the MANHATTAN YOUTH BALLET as well as the MANHATTAN MOVEMENT & ARTS CENTER, got the project up and running when she came across JULIANNE’S first book and thought it would be perfect to workshop with children.

To mount it as a real theatrical event, she decided to cast adults, including Hayley Podschun (Pal Joey, Hairspray) as Strawberry.

JULIANNE, the star of such adult dramas as BOOGIE NIGHTS, THE END OF THE AFFAIR, THE HOURS and CHLOE, has tried to let the producers mount their adaptation without too much interference.

“They’ve been incredibly receptive to all of my notes. I certainly never expected it to be a production of this scale.”

Ms. Caiola said JULIANNE’S tweaks have genuinely helped: “She’s really agreed with most of what we’ve done. Little notes here and there have helped to make the show better. She gave me this wonderful opportunity and I want to make her happy.”

The musical, which includes original songs such as I CAN BE ANYTHING and DIFFERENT, stays close to the message JULIANNE hopes to convey in her books: Be happy being who you are.

“There are things about yourself that you’re not going to like necessarily. What we hope will go away as children doesn’t always go away,” stated JULIANNE, who has finished work on a third Freckleface book and plans a fourth.

“I hoped my freckles would go away. They didn’t. They’re still here. I still don’t like them, but they don’t loom as large a problem in my life any more because I have other things that are more important.”

ON LINE:

frecklefacethemusical.com

THE SOCIAL NETWORK: A DEFINITIVE MOVIE FOR THE YOUNGER GENERATION

This article is written by JAKE COYLE at THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

THE SOCIAL NETWORK is a stylish hyperspeed portrait of a web connected generation made by two men with scant love for the internet who wouldn’t be caught dead friending anybody.

Director DAVID FINCHER and screenwriter AARON SORKIN’S film is about Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) and the contentious creation of the social networking behemoth Facebook.

Born in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room, the site has grown to more than 500 million users worldwide in six years’ time and has a dollar worth in the billions.

The movie, which premieres at THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL today and opens in theatres OCTOBER 1, is pulsating with prestige, of the moment hipness and glowing early reviews.

Much of the excitement is over the sheer filmmaking prowess of the movie, the classical storytelling and the whip smart script — all 162 pages of it, distilled into a dialogue rich two hour film.

But it’s also a fascinating, pugnacious rendering of a younger generation by two filmmakers not of it.

“The movie is sort of built to pick a fight,” commented AARON SORKIN.

“Not with Facebook. I mean it’s built not to have unanimous consensus about what just happened.”

THE SOCIAL NETWORK has already found controversy for its portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg as an arrogant backstabbing hacker with, of all things, social awkwardness.

The film details the fallout of his friend and original Facebook CFO Eduardo Saverin (portrayed by Andrew Garfield, the Spider Man heir apparent) and the claims of college classmates Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (twins played with digital help by Armie Hammer and Josh Pence) and Divya Narendra (MAX MINGHELLA). Both Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss clan have sued Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, claiming a hand in its invention, winning undisclosed settlements.

AARON SORKIN’S screenplay was adapted from Ben Mezrich’s book THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES.

After reading the author’s early treatment, AARON began his script while Ben Mezrich was writing his book and even finished his screenplay before the book was released.

Approached by producer SCOTT RUDIN, DAVID FINCHER came aboard but with the insistence that the film not be cycled through development and numerous revisions, but rather expedited to keep its timeliness.

“It felt like it was talking about something that was immediate,” stated DAVID FINCHER.

“It used to be that to make an invention that touched as many lives as Facebook has, you had to have a wind tunnel, you had to have an assembly line, you had to have a work force. And now all you need is two cases of Red Bull and a DSL.”

AARON makes no bones about it: He’s not a fan of the internet.

He said that in innocuous wall posts like “Had a girls night tonight. Split five desserts. Better hit the gym tomorrow!” he hears someone aping ALLY McBEAL or CARRIE BRADSHAW — projecting themselves as a fictional type.

Social networking, from his perspective, has done the opposite of its intention and “pushed us further apart.”

“When I signed up for this, I had heard of Facebook. But that’s it. Frankly, I had heard of Facebook the way I’ve heard of a carburetor. I can’t pop the hood of my car, point to it and tell you what it does. My attraction to this were the themes that are as old as storytelling itself: of loyalty and betrayal, friends and enemies, power, class, jealousy.”

Particularly in scenes set at Harvard, THE SOCIAL NETWORK is filled with intelligent teenagers who believe steadfastly in their perspectives. Their young lives — driven, sexual, messy — spill out onto the internet.

“Probably kids today waste as much time on Twittering and instant messaging as I did on Gilligan’s Island,” DAVID FINCHER remarked.

“At least people are going to have very dexterous thumbs when they ask the age old question: ‘What are you doin?’”

DAVID FINCHER, with tongue firmly in cheek, calls the film “the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies” — a kind of 21st century morality tale.

Where his previous two films — THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON and ZODIAC – dealt with the passage of time, THE SOCIAL NETWORK hums to an accelerated modern pace, set to Trent Reznor’s synthesizer heavy score.

Mark Zuckerberg is depicted as a time condensed Charles Foster Kane, successful but regretful by his mid 20s.

Jesse Eisenberg has perhaps a less cynical view of the internet. Not long after Mark Zuckerberg was inventing Facebook, Jesse launched a much smaller and much less ambitious wordplay site called OneUpMe.com. His cousin and Facebook employee Eric Fisher now runs it; ironically, users need a Facebook account to play.

In preparation to play Mark Zuckerberg — a relative blank slate considering the little known about him — Jesse watched everything he could watch of the young CEO. After reading that Mark Zuckerberg had been a fencer, he took fencing lessons. He listened to his speeches on an iPod on his way to the set and grew to have a “great affection” for him.

“I had the unique position on set of having to defend my character for six months,” Jesse commented.

“Even though the character occasionally acts in ways that are hurtful to the other characters, I was in the unique position of never seeing him in any light but a completely justified one. It’s impossible to play a role any other way.”

The portrayal is both harsh and empathetic, treating Mark Zuckerberg as a visionary with little patience for condescending adults. Facebook, which didn’t cooperate with the film, said in a statement that “The movie might be a sign that Facebook has become meaningful to people, even if the movie is fiction.”

“You have to answer to its factuality,” AARON SORKIN said.

“I understand Facebook pushing back against the movie. That’s both predictable and understandable. They’re not doing anything wrong; it’s what I’d do, too. First of all, Facebook’s beef isn’t with the movie, it’s with the people who sued them and the testimony they gave.”

“If I were Mark Zuckerberg, if I were Facebook, I would want this story only told from my point of view, which is what they wanted. But we’re telling it from their point of view and the point of view of Eduardo Saverin and the point of view of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.”

The OSCAR drumbeat has all ready started for THE SOCIAL NETWORK, with many prognosticators expecting considerable awards attention for the film. DAVID FINCHER, AARON SORKIN and JESSE EISENBERG are all doing their best to ignore such talk for now; they know how fast and fickle on line conversation can be.

“It’s scaring the heck out of me. I won’t lie to you,” AARON stated of the incredible interest.

“The roll out is enormous. The reaction has been extremely positive — which can only mean one thing: The backlash will begin any moment now.”

PETA CELEBRATES 30 YEARS WITH SOME FAMOUS FRIENDS

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PAMELA ANDERSON posed in a lettuce bikini. Musician DAVE NAVARRO wore just his tattoos. BILL MAHER was photographed in nothing but a baby bonnet.

And countless female actors have gone naked rather than wear fur.

Other celebrities have spoken out against factory farming, bullfighting and the use of great apes in entertainment. They’ve talked up vegetarianism and put down circuses. They’ve done all this and more for PETA – PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS.

The animal rights organization has long relied on newsworthy stars to help spread its message in a hip edgy way — its recent Ink Not Mink campaign featured nude, tattooed celebs like Dennis Rodman and Tommy Lee.

And PETA is thanking the stars at its big 30th birthday party on Saturday.

PETA is throwing a party at the Hollywood Palladium hosted by ALEC BALDWIN and honouring a spate of animal loving stars, including ANJELICA HUSTON, BOB BARKER, WOODY HARRELSON and LEA MICHELE.

“We’re a totally celebrity besotted society. Even if you don’t want to look, you have to see what they’re up to,” commented PETA president and founder INGRID NEWKIRK, who has enlisted celebrity ambassadors since the organization’s early days.

“Celebrity compels us to look and listen…They’re enormously powerful and for them to have a compassionate voice for animals is a godsend.”

Over the past three decades, PETA workers and volunteers – celebrity or not – have significantly reduced animal suffering in every day business practices.

Revlon, Avon and Gillette bowed to pressure from PETA and stopped testing their products on animals. RALPH LAUREN, CALVIN KLEIN, JUICY COUTURE and other major fashion houses agreed to go fur free.

Nike and H&M pledged never to sell any exotic skins and General Motors ceased using primates and pigs in its auto crash tests.

But there’s much more to be done, said rock & roll icon CHRISSIE HYNDE, a longtime vegetarian and animal activist who was once arrested alongside other PETA volunteers in Paris for protesting outside a KFC restaurant.

“To exploit an animal at any time for any reason, it’s the amusement of the devil. And to make profits out of them, or certainly to torture them, it debases the whole human condition.”

When it comes to PETA, CHRISSIE said she’s “at their service always” and happy to lend her name to any of the group’s efforts.

“Celebrities have replaced God in our culture. If they’re the only ones that people will look up to and listen to, then we’ll use whatever ammo we’ve got.”

Comedian BILL MAHER, who serves on PETA’S board of directors, praised the group’s use of celebrity in spreading its message of animal kindness.

“They’re very clever in the way they use humour. They are savvy with the media. They obviously attract a lot of attention and some of it is critical, because they take no prisoners in their approach. I’m glad they do it that way, because I think to defend the innocence of the animals, you really have to go the whole nine yards.”

That includes having the most recent OSCAR host serve as MC of their anniversary soiree. ALEC BALDWIN has been involved with the group for two decades, after being introduced to INGRID NEWKIRK and other PETA leaders through his former spouse KIM BASINGER.

“I became a vegetarian to date my ex wife.”

ALEC BALDWIN and BILL MAHER are among those fighting against factory farming. BILL described the practice as “probably the biggest single horror that goes on, because more cruelty is perpetrated on more animals in that area than almost anything else.”

“We’re talking about millions and millions of animals. I think the regular citizen in America is finally becoming aware that the food they eat comes to them only at the expense of making animals’ lives a misery while they’re on earth for such a brief time.”

Progress sometimes comes slowly, INGRID NEWKIRK noted. But it does come. When she first started PETA in her basement apartment in 1980, few people had considered animal rights.

“The word vegan was unheard of. That was someone from Las Vegas.”

But with the strides PETA has made, the group’s two million members and many celebrity volunteers are inspired to work for more social and legislative changes. Ms. Newkirk has her eye on circuses and animal parks such as Sea World, which she called “abusement parks.”

“The momentum is there. The public sentiment is there. We just have to push against big business. The battle for hearts and minds and consideration and respect for others is where we began our base and where we continue.”

Even small daily decisions can help, she said: Order a veggie burger instead of a hamburger today. Choose animal free clothing. And give your pet at home your love and patience.

You’ll have a team of celebrities behind you all the way.

ON LINE:

peta.org