If Andy Warhol‘s name comes up people (younger ones) are always amazed when I say I knew him. Practically everyone knew Andy or encountered him here or there in the 80s in downtown NYC. But photographer Christopher Makos really KNEW Andy. He traveled with him, ate with him, worked with him and photographed him. A sale of Chris’s photos of Warhol are currently on Paddle 8. He and Vincent Fremont, Warhol’s right-hand man and former head of the Andy Warhol Enterprises take a trip down memory lane along with Chris’s his studio/archive director, Peter Wise on the stories behind Makos’s iconic photographs of Andy Warhol’s scene.

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol, Centre Pompidou, 1986

Vincent Fremont: This picture (above) is from the Centre Pompidou. Christopher and Andy liked to take pictures together. Andy got his point-and-shoot camera, his first one, probably around 1975.
Christopher Makos: Right.

VF: It was a perfect meeting for us, because here he met a photographer and so there was something he could share.

CM: It was the beginning of Andy taking his own photographs. Andy always took Polaroids, but then there was the idea of taking black and white prints.

– Christopher, you were responsible for introducing Andy to the point-and-shoot camera.

CM: Well I encouraged him, and I could go through lots of pictures on trips where we both had the same exact pictures. He would say, “What do I take pictures of?” and I’d say, “just do this and this and this…” I do remember he would always wish he could be a photographer. For a number of reasons: one, it was so immediate. There wasn’t the long process, you could just take the pictures and send them out.

VF: Well that’s why he liked taking Polaroids for his portraits–he liked the distortion of the Big Shot (which was the plastic camera), which he had to physically move back and forth to put it in focus. He had a good relationship with Polaroid. They gave him all the newest cameras and film stock. He wanted a certain look in his Polaroids, which are very distinct.

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol, Altered Image, 1981

CM: These pictures turned out to be the drag photos. Lady Warhol. But the series is actually called Altered Image and the idea is same way that Cindy Sherman alters her images. Halston at the time asked us, “Do you want to borrow a dress?” And we didn’t want to borrow a dress. We weren’t trying to do drag photos. It was just about altering Andy’s face. Because clearly he’s wearing jeans, a button down shirt, and a tie. You know, I still have that tie. I don’t know why I have that tie, but I do.

Peter Wise: Why do you have that tie?

CM: I don’t know… Oh, maybe it was my tie and I said “put the tie on,” I don’t know…

VF: It was commissioned by Hermann the German.

CM: Hermann Wunsche… interesting guy.

VF: That’s how that series came about. Bob Colacello was actually really upset by it. There were two main people who were influential in Andy’s life, Fred Hughes and Bob Colacello. Fred loved this series and thought it was crazy and artistic. But Bob hated it because he thought that that was the end of Andy’s portrait commission career. He thought, if these ladies see that, they’re not going to want to have their portraits done by Warhol.

CM: I can’t believe he had the nerve to say that at that time. I didn’t know that. I guess that was a sensitive subject to him.

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol with Bikers on the Westside Highway, NYC, 1981

CM: The wind blown hair. This one hasn’t been shown much. Andy and I were always looking for opportunities. At one point, I remember the Sony Corporation coming to the Factory and asking, “Would Andy be a spokesperson?” for this or that. And at the time, I remember Fred—and maybe you [Vincent] were a part of that—didn’t know what we were going to charge. Somebody came up with the idea to have Andy become a Zoli model. And then as a model we could book him a special booking. So Andy wanted to get a portfolio, just like a model had a portfolio.

VF: He did become a Zoli model, by the way.

CM: Whether they’re studio pictures or pictures on the street, this was him posing for his portfolio in different settings. [laughs]

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol, Detroit, 1985

VF: Where’s that, Chris?

CM: That’s in Detroit Michigan, and that was–

PW: His 1985 Book Tour for America. Andy’s book of America.

CM: And that’s his Stephen Sprouse haircut.

VF: By this time in Andy’s life, he was wearing predominantly Stephen Sprouse, with the exception maybe of his turtlenecks. They were cotton, they could be from anywhere…

CM: But he liked the all black look because he never had to change it. He never had to get it cleaned. It was always pretty dirty.

VF: He had to carry a lot. He carried his tape recorder, his little portrait camera, he carried his extra batteries. He always had his pockets loaded.

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol Painting the Flag, 1983

CM: This is a photo that we took in Madrid, Spain.
– Why was Andy there?

VF: That was the first solo show of Andy’s in Spain. Because with Franco, before that, no contemporary artist was allowed to have a show.

CM: I remember this Spanish photographer set it all up, and then I took the picture. And of course I got all the credit for it. No one ever knew. I got an email from him not that long ago, where he said, “Oh, here’s my picture” and I said, “Oh, that’s nice.” I didn’t know what to say. It’s not like I was trying to supersede him. It’s just that I took the picture and I published it in this and that. It became my photograph.

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol Kissing Ultra Violet, 1978

CM: This is from a series of kissing photographs. I used to do two pages in the back of Interview magazine called— was it “In” or “Out”?

VF: I can never remember if it was “In” or “Out.”

CM: No, Bob had “Out” and I had “In”. So I was always looking for a theme for every month and we were coming up on February. And what’s in February? Valentine’s Day. So a few months before that, whenever we were doing something or going somewhere, I’d say “give this one a kiss.” So then I developed a bunch of these kiss pictures. This was with Ultra Violet at one of those dinners that Salvador Dali gave…

Christopher Makos, The Gang of Four at Studio 54 (Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, and Halston), 1978

CM: And that’s the picture which I’ve called the ‘Gang of Four.’ That was one of those big important nights. It was probably Bianca Jagger‘s birthday party…. they were the royalty of that time period, even though there were people around like Malcolm Forbes and this one and that one.

VF: This was showtime. If you were at Studio 54 when they were all together… You know, I brought the Polaroid executive in and that sealed the deal for more pages in Interview magazine. There they all were, and the guy was staggered by it. So it really helped the relationship and got us more ads. With Andy you were working all the time, from morning to night.

Christopher Makes, Andy Warhol, Tiananmen Square, 1982

CM: This is at Tiananmen Square in front of the Chairman Mao portrait that Andy was inspired by. And this picture is so interesting because this was before his Botox. If you look at my last pictures of Andy, he’s different. I often feel that being a photographer is like being a psychotherapist. You know, it’s about giving people their good self-image. If you look at this photo, there’s no botox… who was that lady who he used to get the lamb placenta injections from?

PW: Georgette Klinger.

CM: Georgette Klinger, where he’d get the lamb placenta injections… It wasn’t Georgette Klinger, there was a lady who used to work with Bob… There was a lady…. what’s her name…

PW: I was just going to add that this is the one time Andy did go to China. He went around the world in the ‘50s but he didn’t go to China except for this one time. It was 1982, which was the very tail end of the authoritarian stuff before it loosened up for a few years. And then it tightened up again after Tiananmen Square. But here everybody’s still wearing their Mao outfits in either blue or brown or green. Nobody’s wearing Western clothes.

Christopher Makos, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1984

CM: This is an interesting picture because Basquiat‘s holding a blow up globe. There’s a point to the fact that he’s putting Africa in the front. Because I do remember him talking about how he felt like he was the token black person in the art scene. He was making a point of this with the globe, the fact that the globe could be deflated easily. This was after he had achieved some success. Because his early success was more with the crazy hairdo and this was when he was feeling—I don’t want to say the pinch—of being a successful art person. But he was the token black art person on the scene. There was nobody else. It’s sort of like, for the longest time, there were token women artists like Georgia O’Keefe and Louise Bourgeois. But when you start to think of the big stars, there wasn’t anyone like him. And there was no big black artist at the time.

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol Applying Makeup to Debbie Harry, 1980

VF: Sometimes we didn’t have a makeup artist. The subject had to be bright white, to offset the flash. So sometimes he’d do the makeup. He was very specific about how he wanted to photograph somebody.

PW: Chris, weren’t you actually friends with Debbie before? Or as you were meeting Andy?

CM: Yeah.

VF: You were the one who brought Debbie up to Andy’s studio?

PW: Debbie [Harry] and [Keith] Haring.

– How did you meet Debbie?

PW: Did you photograph her for Rolling Stone or for Circus [magazine] maybe?

CM: I don’t know… I just remember spending the blackout with her in my apartment.

VF: And we all became good friends with Debbie, and still are. I keep in contact with her.

CM: She’s so accessible–and, she’s wearing a Stephen Sprouse dress there. You can see all these little pieces of plastic…

You can check out Scene: Warhol by Makos, where the above photographs, and more, by Christopher Makos are available.

Makos and Warhol, 1981

(Photos, Christopher Makos; via Paddle 8)

The post #PictureThis: Christopher Makos Tells the Stories Behind His Iconic Warhol Photos appeared first on The WOW Report.

Job No. 2

Lithograph, 2003

Oldřich Kulhánek (1940- 2013) was a Czech painter, graphic designer, illustrator and stage designer. He designed Czech currency and postage stamps.

Kulhánek was born in Prague. In 1964, he graduated from the Academy Of Arts, Architecture And Design in Prague.

In 1971, he was arrested by the STB (Czechoslovak Secret Police) and imprisoned for “defamation of the allied socialist states”. His crime was that in some of the art he created from 1968 to 1971, he included “a distorted portrait of Joseph Stalin, perforated five-pointed red stars or joyful faces of socialist workers turned into a hideous grin“. His graphics were considered “ideologically dangerous” and were destroyed by the government. Kulhánek spent a month in prison and he was interrogated regularly for next two years, and was prohibited from exhibiting his work.

In the 1980s, he created lithographs inspired by the development of the human body. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the non-violent fall of Communism and peaceful transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, Kulhánek was free to work and travel for the first time in decades.

His works can be seen in important European and American museums, including the The Library Of Congress in Washington DC, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Albertina in Vienna, Art Institute Of Chicago, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva.

Kulhánek died in Prague in January 2013, taken by cancer at 72-years-old.

Photograph by Michal Sváček

He suffered terribly under the Communists. Kulhánek:

“It was a challenge for me, I’m still paying for it, so I watch if it’s good. My belief is that the artist should report on himself, about the time and place where he lives, in his work. The artist should uncover the hypocrisy (or lie) of the establishment, reveal what is happening with man, manipulation and dehumanization. The artist should report on the soul of world.”

The post #ArtDept: “Job No.2” by Oldřich Kulhánek appeared first on The WOW Report.

Angelina Jolie‘s new Vanity Fair cover story by contributing editor Evgenia Peretz is accompanied by the requisite glam photos by Mert Atlas and Marcus Piggott, and starts with a setup that goes like this…

“Like most things involving Angelina Jolie, stepping foot into her house is an experience so heightened one wonders if it’s for real or the product of careful orchestration. The large gates to her recently purchased Los Feliz house—an 11,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts mansion once owned by the epic filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille—slowly swing open, revealing rolling lawns, lush trees at the perimeter. No one’s there, and all is quiet except for the delicate sound of fountains, arched in a row over a swimming pool. A number of doors to the house are open, as if posing some riddle from a fairy tale—which one to enter? Inside, the vibe is airy and calm: all open windows and cross-breezes, creamy-white unlit candles, soft creamy-white furnishings. Finally she emerges from the other side of the house and glides across the room in a creamy-white, floor-length caftan. Her hair is down, her feet bare, only a touch of makeup, her skin luminous. She smiles widely—a beneficent, ethereal wood nymph.

But as soon as she starts speaking, you realize that your preconceived notions about Jolie aren’t quite right. She’s not a celestial goddess. She’s not the high-and-mighty do-gooder. She’s not the intense control freak—or at least not obviously so. She comes across, rather, as normal-person friendly and practical, even chitchatty. She explains the deal with the big empty mansion. She moved into this space just four days ago with her six kids. It wasn’t for the prestigious history or the architecture. She needed a good place fast, somewhere secluded, with a lot of rooms; this one, which was listed for around $25 million, has six bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. Following her September 2016 filing for divorce from Brad Pitt, she and her children spent nine months in a rental, basically living out of suitcases. And so she hasn’t really unpacked, barely knows her way around the place, has never had a real visitor, and isn’t sure where the best spot is to sit and talk. With that in question, she roams from room to room—the fabulous kitchen, worthy of a Nancy Meyers movie, charming gray library with a library ladder (her favorite room in the house), the generous landing at the foot of a sweeping staircase, anchored by a round table with a bouquet of white flowers. She finally settles on the living room, which a set-decorator friend furnished on the fly, with two creamy-white sofas and some big throw pillows. She looks at them curiously. “I didn’t even know I needed ‘throw pillows.’ ” Decorating, house stuff, “that was always Brad’s thing.”

(If you want to get a look at the amazing house described, it was one of my more popular #RealEstatePorn posts of late.)

But the real scoop and controversy of the piece was supposed to Angie’s break-up with Brad Pitt, but she says little in the piece that gives you any insight as to what REALLY happened,

“…in the summer of 2016, “things got bad,” says Jolie. “I didn’t want to use that word. . . . Things became ‘difficult.’ ” There has been Hollywood talk that their lifestyle had taken its toll on Pitt, and that he was craving a more stable, normal life for the whole family. When I bring this question up to her, it’s the one moment when Jolie becomes a bit defensive. “[Our lifestyle] was not in any way a negative,” she says quickly, adamantly. “That was not the problem. That is and will remain one of the wonderful opportunities we are able to give our children . . . They’re six very strong-minded, thoughtful, worldly individuals. I’m very proud of them.” Jolie has indicated that, for the sake of the kids, she doesn’t want to talk about the breakup.”

After the story has appeared Jolie is now refuting an excerpt that depicts a “disturbing” audition process for her upcoming Netflix film, First They Killed My Father.

Critics have spoken out about the casting strategy, some calling it emotionally abusive, sickening and cruel.

Jolie said on the Huffington Post that the audition scene described in the article was “false and upsetting.”

“Every measure was taken to ensure the safety, comfort and well-being of the children on the film starting from the auditions through production to the present.

I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario. The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened.“

The actors in the film, which depicts the four-year reign of terror and genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, were a mix of trained actors, orphans and disadvantaged children. Jolie says in the VF article,

“There wasn’t a person who was working on the movie who didn’t have a personal connection. They weren’t coming to do a job. They were walking in the exodus for the people whom they had lost in their family, and it was out of respect for them that they were going to re-create it.”

The “pretend game” was reportedly based on Ung’s real-life experience of getting caught stealing by the Khmer Rouge. Ung, a Cambodian-American, survived the Khmer Rouge killings that claimed the lives of her parents, two siblings and nearly 2 million Cambodians in the late 1970s.

The actors who were ultimately cast in Jolie’s film are a mix of trained actors, orphans and disadvantaged children. Srey Moch Sareum, the child playing the film’s leading role, lives in a slum community and attends a non-governmental organization school in Cambodia.

Rithy Panh, a filmmaker and producer on the film, himself a survivor of the Cambodian genocide, called the criticism over the “game” described in the profile a “misunderstanding.” He said,

“Great care was taken with the children not only during auditions, but throughout the entirety of the film’s making.

Because the memories of the genocide are so raw, and many Cambodians still have difficulty speaking about their experiences, a team of doctors and therapists worked with us on set every day so that anyone from the cast or crew who wanted to talk could do so.“

You can read the entire story and see more amazing pics here and decide for yourself after seeing And First They Killed My Father (the feel-good movie of the year!) on Netflix.

(Photos, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott; via, ET, Vanity Fair)

The post #Controversy: Angelina Refutes Vanity Fair Casting Excerpt as “False & Upsetting” appeared first on The WOW Report.

Actor, author, screenwriter, and director Sam Shepard has passed away. He had been ill with ALS for some time, and died peacefully yesterday at home in Kentucky, surrounded by his children and sisters.

Shepard authored forty-four plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983).

Shepard’s plays are chiefly known for their bleak, poetic, often surrealist elements, black humor and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society.

Shepard began his acting career in earnest when he was cast as the handsome land baron in Terrence Malick‘s Days of Heaven (1978) which led to other important film roles.
He was famously partnered with Jessica Lange for decades in an on-again, off again romance which is the stuff of Hollywood legend.

By 1986, his play, Fool for Love, was getting a film adaptation directed by Robert Altman, in which Shepard played the lead role. He was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986.

Recently, Shepard played the patriarch of the Rayburn family in the Netflix series, Bloodline opposite Sissy Spacek.

Sam Shepard was 73.

Shephard in “Bloodline”

(Photos, Bruce Weber, Netflix; via Broadway World)

The post #RIP: Actor, Author, Director, Sam Shepard appeared first on The WOW Report.

The Pfeffermans are back for season 4 of Transparent! The trailer for Amazon’s award winning series will take the family and Maura on a political and emotional journey from their comfort zones in Los Angeles to Israel.

Creator/showrunner Jill Soloway has indicated that this season would take a sharper political turn with a very clear message to number 45 himself, Donald Trump. Maura, played by the incredible Jeffrey Tambor, travels to speak at a conference in Israel where the whole family will join her for a journey into the family’s history.

Transparent has won eight Emmys on top of two Golden Globes. We’re sure the cast and crew are equally excited since Transparent has already garnered seven new Emmy nominations this year.

See the trailer and welcome back the Pfeffermans as they set on their adventures to find love, truth and acceptance!

[Header Image via Youtube] 

The post The Wait Is Almost Over: Transparent Season 4 Trailer Is Here! appeared first on The WOW Report.

Hey Qween with Jonny McGovern and Lady Red Couture is back this week featuring lifestyle influencer Daniel Preda, who covers a gambit of topics including his career, his boyfriend Joey Graceffa, and his future plans.

Be on the look out for Daniel’s feature in Hey Qween’s LOOK at HUH, released tomorrow!

Check out the episode:

The post Daniel Preda Joins Jonny McGovern and Lady Red Couture in ALL NEW Hey Qween appeared first on The WOW Report.

Jeanne Moreau, the great French film star has left this world.

Moreau:

“Nostalgia is when you want things to say the same. I know so many people staying in the same place. And I think, my God, look at them! They’re death before they die. That’s a terrible risk. Living is risking.”

Moreau, who starred in Jules Et Jim, photograph by Ronald Grant

Moreau was the very essence of French Cinema, French life, and the French attitude. She was famously unsentimental and believed in living in the moment. She did not like the romanticizing and continued celebration of the French New Wave era that she helped define.

A director, screenwriter and singer as well as a stage and screen actor, Moreau was first noticed by movie fans for a series of roles in films considered part of the French New Wave, most famously Jules Et Jim (1962). She made Hollywood films also, including The Last Tycoon (1976) and Orson Welles’ Chimes At Midnight (1965). She was embraced by her gay fans for her work in Querelle (1982) directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and starring Brad Davis, adapted from a novel by gay writer Jean Genet.

Moreau was born in Paris in 1928. Her father was a French chef, and her mother was a cabaret dancer who performed at the Folies Bergère.

She began her acting career on stage, and became a major player at the Comédie-Française. In the late 1950s began making films, and achieved international recognition with starring roles in a pair of Louis Malle films: the noir Ascenseur Pour L’échafaud (Elevator To The Gallows) and the drama Les Amants (The Lovers) both in 1958. The films were controversial; Les Amants was subject of an obscenity case in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1960, Moreau won the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Peter Brook’s Seven Days… Seven Nights. She won many other awards including a BAFTA Award for Viva Maria! (1965), and the César Award for The Old Lady Who Walked In The Sea (1992).

Moreau in Ascenseur Pour L’échafaud , 1958

It was Jules Et Jim that made Moreau an international star. Directed by François Truffaut, the stylish film is set during WW I and is the story a love triangle between Moreau’s character, Catherine, and friends Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre). It remains hugely influential, becoming synonymous with the French New Wave movement and regularly appearing on Best Films Of All Time lists.

She made more than 75 films in a career that lasted six and a half decades. Her final feature film was O Gebo E A Sombra (Gebo And Shadow) in 2012, playing opposite the great Claudia Cardinale. It was directed by Manoel de Oliveira , who was 103-years-old when it was made.

Moreau had strong and lasting friendships with prominent writers: Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet, Henry Miller and Marguerite Duras. She was married to filmmaker Jean-Louis Richard (1949–1964) and then to American film director William Friedkin (1977–1979). Bisexual director Tony Richardson left his wife, Vanessa Redgrave, for her in 1967, but they never married. She also had affairs with Malle and Truffaut, fashion designer Pierre Cardin, and jazz musician Miles Davis.

In 2016, photograph by Rudy Waks

She was a good friend of Sharon Stone, who presented an American Academy Of Motion Pictures life tribute to Moreau in 1998. Orson Welles called her “The Greatest Actress In The world”.

Moreau was 89-years-old yesterday when her final credits rolled last night.

The post #RIP: French Acting Great, Jeanne Moreau appeared first on The WOW Report.

Anthony Scaramucci is out as White House communications director, two sources tell CNN. New chief of staff, John F. Kelly wanted him removed because,

“he didn’t think he was disciplined and he had burned his credibility.“

CNN is reporting,

Scaramucci is the third White House communications director to leave the post that had been vacant since late May, when Mike Dubke left after about three months on the job. Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, also assumed some of the communications director role before he resigned when Scaramucci was hired July 21.

His departure comes days after Scaramucci unleashed a vulgar tirade against two top White House officials in a conversation with a reporter.

This is a developing story and will be updated. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Trump sees this a “great day at the White House.”

The New Yorker sees it this way…

The post #Breaking: SCARAMUCCI OUT! appeared first on The WOW Report.

What do you do in West Hollywood when you’re a little bored? Well, if you’re cool like Paris Jackson and Macaulay Culkin, you get some new ink! Posting on her personal Instagram story, the 19 year old, showed both forearms next to one another with tattoos of…spoons?

According to sources, it’s an inside joke for the two old friends. For those who don’t remember, Culkin is Paris’s Godfather and was a member of Michael Jackson’s inner circle from his childhood until Jackson’s death in 2009.

As for Paris, she claims to have more than 50 tattoos and enjoys solidifying bonds with a little ink. So cute! While getting tattoos with Macaulay is new, Paris has never been shy about posting photos with those closest to her. Back in April, the two hung out as pictured in her Instagram post while wearing bunny ears. She’s also been seen painting Culkin’s toenails in 2016.

It must be nice to remain so close after the King of Pop having such an influence on his kids and friends. We have no doubt that there will be more tattoos and cute hang outs to come.

[Images via Paris’s Jackson Instagram]

The post Macaulay Culkin and his Goddaughter, Paris Jackson, Get Matching Tattoos appeared first on The WOW Report.

Photograph from MSNBC

This past spring, Steve Kornacki was named National Political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. Before, he was the adorable host of the Monday edition of Meet The Press Daily, and had his own show, the deliciously titled Up With Steve Kornacki, on Saturdays and Sunday early mornings.

Before stepping in front of the cameras, he worked as a journalist for the New York Observer, covered Congressional news for Roll Call, and was the politics editor for Salon. He has also contributed deeply-researched political pieces for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Boston Globe, and Daily Beast. He spent three years in New Jersey, chronicling the politics of the Garden State for a website and co-hosting a weekly show on News 12 New Jersey, a 24-hour cable news outfit.

Born Stephan Joseph Kornacki, in Groton, Massachusetts in 1979, he graduated from Boston University’s School of Communications.

He’s just one of a growing group of openly gay new anchors and reporters. when just a decade ago, it wouldn’t have seemed possibly to be a major media figure and be out of the closet. Today we have: CNN Business anchor Richard Quest; Robin Roberts of Good Morning, America; MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts; ABC’s Dan Kloeffler; managing editor of Fox News’ Breaking News Division, Shepard Smith; Ari Shapiro of NPR; LZ Granderson of ESPN, NBC Justice correspondent Pete Williams; plus, the Holy Trinity of Rachel Maddow, Don Lemon, and Anderson Cooper.

Kornacki is a political geek who loves sports. He is maybe not as hunky as Thomas Roberts or as beautiful and daring as Anderson Cooper, but he is exactly the sort of nice, handsome, clean-cut boy you could bring home to meet the folks.

Kornacki:

“Most people used to be exposed to only a select cross-section of gay people. But, the atmosphere has changed so much, and so quickly.”

Kornacki came out of the closet in an essay that he wrote for Salon in November 2011. Among his observations in the piece, Kornacki wrote:

“I was the All-American kid, or so I told myself, good grades, never in trouble, bright future, well-respected by my peers. After a trip to Cape Cod with a friend and his family, the kid’s mother said her favorite moment was watching ‘straitlaced Steve’ struggling to make sense of all the hedonism around him when we drove out to Provincetown. I remember seeing drag queens and men dressed in skimpy attire and thinking to myself, Get me out of here so I can watch a baseball game.”

After graduating from BU in 2001, Kornacki moved to Los Angles with the crazy notion of making money as a perennial contestant on game shows, one of his biggest obsessions. After failing to land a gig on any of his favorite shows, he returned to the Northeast and found work writing copy for a regional television news. He also booked guest appearances on the cable news shows that caught the attention of the execs at MSNBC. By 2011, he was a regular pundit on The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell.

Just was his career was really taking off, Kornacki fell hard for a guy, but wasn’t ready to tell the world. The coming out piece for Salon piece was a way to tell all and an audacious attempt to salvage a romance that was falling apart from the burden of a life in the closet. He came out to his parents first, by giving them a copy of the article before it went live online.

Besides his expanded roll on MSNBC, he has a book on 1990s U.S. Political History that will be published later this year.

At 6’ 2’’, with perfect skin and perfect teeth, and just that perfect dash of wonkiness, I think Kornacki is a real dreamboat. He is our Monday Mancrush. And, boys, Kornacki is single.

The post #ManCrushMonday: Political Correspondent, Steve Kornacki appeared first on The WOW Report.

It was a fast-paced news day today as Randy Rainbow breaks the news LIVE to the profane White House Communications Director, Anthony Scaramucci, that he is OUT. As Randy puts it,

“It was awkward AF…”

Watch.

The post #Breaking: Randy Rainbow Delivers the News to “The Mooch” LIVE That He’s Out! Watch appeared first on The WOW Report.

James St. James
Adam Duritz
Ashley Parker Angel
Chuck D
Coolio
Demián Bichir
Giancarlo Giannini
Jason Momoa
Joe Elliott
John Carroll Lynch
Sam Mendes
Tempestt Bledsoe

[Image via James St. James‘s Instagram]

The post August 1st: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch! appeared first on The WOW Report.

Photograph by Jeanloup Sieff (1971)

 

August 1, 1936– Yves Saint Laurent:

“Fashions fade, style is eternal.”

Yves Saint Lauren was born in Algeria and raised in France. He was bullied at school, but found solace at home with his drawing and painting and designing of dresses for his mother and sisters.

When he was only 17-years-old and studying in Paris, Saint Lauren won first prize in a dress design competition sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat.

When the great designer Christian Dior saw Saint Laurent’s designs, he was so impressed that he offered the younger man a job as an assistant and referred to Saint Laurent as the ‘Dauphin’. When Dior died in 1957, Saint Laurent took over the House Of Dior. His first collection for Dior in 1958 was greeted enthusiastically. His 1960 collection for Dior appropriated the new “Left Bank Style”, with black leather jackets, knitted turtlenecks, and crocodile jackets. The fashion world watched with fascination as street fashion was redesigned at the hands of a skilled couturier.

In that same year, Saint Laurent was called up to fight in the Algerian War. When he was discharged several months later, he discovered that he had been replaced as head designer at Dior. He then just simply created his own company. Voilà!

Under his own name, Saint Laurent produced his elegant wearable clothes that drew on a huge range of influences. He successfully tapped into the vogue for androgynous dressing that spread throughout Europe and the USA in the mid-1960s.

With that first collection that Saint Laurent showed under his own name, when he was just 25-years-old, he was already astonishingly famous, having been the boy wonder at the House Of Dior since he was 21 years old. He received glowing press from Paris to New York and dressed the female members of high society on both sides of the Atlantic. He also attracted a new, younger, hipper crowd to his first show: Françoise Sagan, who had just caused a sensation with her novel Bonjour Tristesse; the ballet dancer Zizi Jeanmaire; cosmetics queen Helena Rubinstein; and Victoire, the model of the moment.

In the 1960s and 1970s, all the cool women wanted to wear Saint Laurent, including the actor Catherine Deneuve, who remained a lifelong friend of the designer after being costumed by him for the Luis Buñuel film Belle De Jour (1967) and being among his very first customers on the day Saint Laurent launched his prêt-à-porter line (she purchased a white pantsuit). Bianca Jagger wore a white Saint Laurent tuxedo with nothing underneath when she married Mick in 1971.

In 1993, YSL Inc, which was, by then, also a major perfume house, was sold to a major international conglomerate and it has changed hands a number of times since, becoming part of Gucci in 1999, with American Tom Ford as designer and creative director.

In 1958, Saint Laurent met Pierre Bergé, who was, at the time, the manager for and the lover of the Parisian painter Bernard Buffet. In a scene out of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, at a weekend party Buffet met his future wife, and Saint Laurent and Bergé roused a romance that lasted until 1976. After their breakup, Bergé continued to serve as Saint Laurent’s business manager and in a very modern arrangement, remained living in the couple’s home until 1986.

For 40 years, Bergé managed the business while Saint Laurent focused entirely on the creative side. Bergé:

“Fashion is a tennis match; between the fashion designer and women. If you don’t have those two people, you cannot create.”

During the 1960s and 1970s, Saint Laurent could be spotted at clubs in Paris and NYC. He liked to drink and do cocaine. He also spent more time at his famous home in Marrakech, Morocco. In the late 1970s, he and Bergé had purchased a neo-gothic villa, Château Gabriel near Deauville, France. Saint Laurent was a great admirer of writer Marcel Proust who had been a frequent guest at the villa. When they bought Château Gabriel, Saint Laurent and Bergé commissioned the famous interior designer Jacques Grange to furnish it in themes inspired by Proust’s Remembrance Of Things Past.

His prêt-à-porter line was extremely popular with the public, if not with the critics. It earned much more money for Saint Laurent and Bergé than the haute couture line ever did. However, Saint Laurent became more erratic with the pressure of designing two haute couture and two prêt-à-porter collections every year. He turned to more drinking and more drugs. At some shows, he could barely walk down the runway at the end. He had to be propped-up by his models.

His 1987 prêt-à-porter show in NYC, which featured $100,000 jewel encrusted leather jackets only days after the “Black Monday” Stock Market Crash, was a disaster.

As his depression deepened, Saint Laurent found a way to be happy only twice a year, on the days a new collection was shown, usually to wild acclaim. But, within 24 hours that joy would evaporate. Saint Laurent was so attached to his favorite designs, that to part with even one of them would leave a black hole in his life.

Although his sexuality was hardly a secret in the fashion world, Saint Laurent did not publicly acknowledge his homosexuality until 1991, in an interview in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro.

In 2002, with years of poor health, drug abuse, depression, alcoholism, and criticisms of YSL designs, Saint Laurent was forced to face the indignity of having Gucci close the illustrious couture House Of YSL. Afterwards, Saint Laurent became increasingly reclusive and spent the last years of his life alone at his house in Marrakech. He took that final walk down the runway in June 2008, taken by brain cancer. He was 71-years-old. His ashes were spread in the garden of the villa in Morocco. Bergé spoke at the funeral service:

“I know that I will never forget what I owe you and that one day I will join you under the Moroccan palms.”

A French produced biopic, Yves Saint Laurent was released in 2014 to rapturous reviews. Pierre Niney won the César Award for Best Actor for playing the title role. Don’t get it confused with the far more interesting and better, smart, stylish, scintillating Saint Laurent(2014) starring Gaspard Ulliel as Saint Laurent and Jérémie Renier as Bergé, with Helmut Berger as an older Saint Laurent. This one focuses on Saint Laurent’s life from 1967 to 1976, when the designer was at the peak of his career. It was selected as the French entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 2015 Academy Awards and it received ten César Award nominations, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor.

 

The post #BornThisDay: Fashion Designer, Yves Saint Laurent appeared first on The WOW Report.

Original Golden Girls writer Stan Zimmerman said his the “reboot” of the show isn’t even being considered by a network.

It’s not technically a reboot of the classic sitcom, but Zimmerman says it was “inspired” by the show. Silver Foxes would feature four older gay men living together in Palm Springs. Zimmerman said,

“Unfortunately, we cannot get one network executive to read it. Or even a producer to pass it to them. We have found ageism and homophobia alive and well in Hollywood. Hopefully a groundswell of support from the viewing public will get an outlet like Hulu or Amazon to make it.”

A private reading of the first script (written by Zimmerman and fellow Golden Girls alumni James Berg) had some heavy hitters taking a look. George Takei, Leslie Jordan, Bruce Vilanch, and Todd Sherry played the four major roles while Daniele Gaither and former SNL cast member Cheri Oteri played “the power lesbian couple” neighbors. Zimmerman says,

“When they got the script, it was just hysterical. It was a pretty classic afternoon in my house. I hope to share that with the rest of the world on a real TV show. I think it could be so great.”

Zimmerman also included a one-line cameo for Betty White, the only surviving star from the original show.

“Our fingers are crossed.“

Mine too. Hey, World of Wonder, what do you say, want to produce a sitcom?

After the reading with Leslie Jordan, Bruce Villanch, George Takei, Todd Sherry, Daniele Gaither, Cheri Oteri & company. Photo, Instagram

(via LGBTQ Nation)

The post #LGBTQ: You May Never See the Gay “Golden Girls” Reboot. No Network Wants It… appeared first on The WOW Report.

According to a report by Business Insider, Queen Elizabeth enjoys her four cocktails a day.

1. Just before lunch QEII reportedly has a Dubonnet cocktail with a slice of lemon and lots of ice, according to Darren McGrady, a former royal chef.

(A Dubonnet cocktail is 1 part gin and 2 parts Dubonnet, topped off with a slice of lemon or orange.)

2. During lunch, McGrady said that the Queen will have a glass of wine with a simple lunch of vegetables and fish. She finishes with a piece of chocolate. McGrady said.

“She loves it.”

Margaret Rhodes, the Queen’s cousin, claims that the Queen will also have a dry gin martini with lunch sometimes.

3. Of course, The Queen has her afternoon tea, where she also sips on an herbal cocktail. She has a slice of pie or some chocolate biscuit cake, as well.

4. Finally, Her Majesty has a light dinner and follows a “no starch” rule if she’s dining alone. She then finishes her day off with a glass of champagne turning in for the night.

That intake puts the Queen at six units of alcohol per day, which would technically make her a binge drinker by U.K. standards. But hey, at 91, it seems to be working fine.

The Queen Mother loved her cocktails too and lived to be 101. She once said:

“I couldn’t get through all my engagements without a little something.”

With an estimated alcohol intake of 70 units a week, which is 10 times the amount of a female heavy drinker in the U.S. and twice the amount of one in Great Britain. (These Queens like to drink!)

The Queen Mum was famously known to call down to her gay staff members and say,

“Would one of you queens, bring this old Queen a drink?“

God Save the Queen –the last drink! Cheers, queers!

(Images, YouTube; via Travel & Leisure)

The post #Cheers!: This Old Queen Has Four Cocktails Every Day! (At 91, Who Are We To Judge…?) appeared first on The WOW Report.

Tish (right) backstage at Crazy Horse, in New York City, in the spring of 1967

“Tish may be the oldest drag queen in New York City, he knew he wanted to be an entertainer from an early age. He grew up in Dayville, Connecticut, the eldest of seven children in a French Catholic, blue-collar family. Following his marriage to Norman, whom he met one night at an underground gay bar, Tish worked factory jobs and took dance and singing lessons at a prominent music academy in Providence; on weekends, he played the local clubs…”

Tish feels there’s a distinction between a drag queen and a female impersonator…

“A drag queen is an amateur—a female impersonator is a professional.”

At the end of their sets, most female impersonators would change back into men’s clothing, but Tish sometimes went out in costume. “I made my living as a girl—except horizontally,” he said with a wink. “It was very easy to do, especially when I was in demand.” Tish never performed at the higher-end clubs, like Club 82, which had a ritzier atmosphere than the Moroccan Village and a larger celebrity following.

Adrian, an old friend of Tish’s and a fellow-performer, tried to explain why. “They thought Tish was too trashy,” he said. “He was too crazy,” Adrian went on, “He was too outrageous.” Tish was arrested once during the raid of a gay bar, but the police let him go, assuming he was a woman. In 1969, Tish missed the Stonewall riots because he was performing at a night club in upstate New York; he has never marched in a Gay Pride parade.”

It was a different world for the LGBTQ community in the 50s and 60s

“‘They would book us for a week and pa-pa-pa-pa, we’d stay for six months.’ He remembers his audition at the Moroccan Village, a popular club on West Eighth Street during the nineteen-fifties, for which he sang “You’ll Never Know How Much I Love You”.

By the nineteen-seventies, club culture was shifting away from dinner theatre and toward disco. Tish’s cohort of performers had passed into middle age, and the next generation was beginning to cross-dress as part of everyday life. During this period, one of Tish’s boyfriends, Peter, transitioned to become Eve. Tish wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but he took care of Eve because, he said, “that’s when she needed me most.” Like many of Tish’s contemporaries, Eve was a sex worker and died during the aids crisis. Now an urn containing her ashes sits in Tish’s living room.”

Tish is a fixture in the West Village for nearly 7 decades…

“Since 1956, Tish has lived in a one-bedroom railroad apartment on the corner of Bank and West Fourth streets, across from a former travel agency that was later a Taoist decor shop, then a Little Marc Jacobs, and is now shuttered. He pays two hundred and fifty-six dollars a month in rent, and relies on food stamps, social security, and the nominal fee he charges an aspiring actor and chef, Derek, who sleeps on a pullout couch in the living room.

Above the couch is a wall of framed photographs of Tish—you can recognize him by his nose, which is shaped like a teardrop—wearing blond wigs, long gowns, and feather boas. In other images, he is dressed as a man and wears his bleached hair in a pompadour. Beneath these photos is a small framed poster from a nineteen-sixties travelling act, “The French Box Revue,” in which the female impersonators are arranged in a grid, labelled with men’s names: Mr. Dayzee Dee, Mr. Jackie King, Mr. Bobby Dell, Mr. Tony St. Cyr, and Mr. Tish.

Recently, Derek has gone from Tish’s roommate to his caretaker. He is hoping to inherit the apartment through a “nontraditional family arrangement” provision from New York’s Office of Rent Administration. For Tish, it’s a symbiotic relationship: he has somebody to look after him, and what does he care if Derek wants the apartment after he’s dead? He won’t be needing it.”

It’s a culture shock for Tish to see a drag show in 2017, but the author and Tish’s friends head out one Sunday afternoon…

“The men had decided on a matinee at Boots and Saddle, a former leather bar turned drag den, located just a few blocks from Tish’s apartment. As the group descended the dark staircase and entered the bar, a drag queen was reading off bingo numbers to a crowd of revellers. Some of the clientele, mostly gay men and straight girls, were dressed for brunch; others were in clothes from the night before. Two patrons beckoned for the group to take empty seats at their table. Tish told them about his years as a female impersonator, shouting over the music to be heard. The younger of the two, who wore a tight T-shirt and barely looked eighteen, nodded enthusiastically. “It’s so important to know our history,” he said.

The lights dimmed and Fifi Dubois began her set by dancing frantically around the bar, lip-synching to an upbeat eighties number, and then taking the stage to introduce herself. Her face was heavily contoured, which made her look like an alien, but she knew how to work the crowd. Later, Fifi began singing along to a mélange of telephone-themed songs interspersed with deranged monologues, one of which featured a woman screaming, “My pussy is burning, my pussy is burning.”

“Who gives a shit?” Tish said. “If we were to say ‘pussy’ in the clubs I worked in, they would have broken your legs.” Fifi lowered herself into a split and then somersaulted on the sticky floor. Adrian looked aghast, but Tish seemed unimpressed. “She’s good, but she’s lip-synching.” There was no getting around this fact for Tish and Adrian: the art of female impersonation had gone downhill. Sipping their Cokes, they began to muse on the past and the long arcs of their careers. “You can’t grow old in this business, darling,” Adrian said. “I’ll never get old,” Tish replied.”

You can read the full story here.

(Photo, Queer Music Heritage; via The New Yorker)

The post #DragHerStory: At 93, Tish Says She’s NOT NYC’s Oldest Drag Queen –”I’ll Never Get Old.” appeared first on The WOW Report.

Transformation Tuesday just got a whole lot QTer…New queers featured every week! Tag us, take a pic of us and follow us on Instagram at QWERRRKOUT, and you too could be the next QT! YOU BETTA QWERRRK!

Kaleena

Age: 30

Location: Seattle, Washington

About:

“I started drag a little over 5 years ago, to finally be the Barbie I wished I had. I’m inspired by classic glamour and current fashion forward ladies such as Bella and Gigi Hadid. And my drag inspirations have been Raven and Violet Chachki.”

Instagram: kaleenamarkos

The post #TransformationTuesday: QWERRRKOUT feat. Kaleena appeared first on The WOW Report.

August 1, 1981– MTV: Music Television goes on the air for the first time at 12:01am EST, with the words, spoken over footage of the first Space Shuttle launch countdown of Columbia, were spoken by one of MTV’s creators, John Lack:

 “Ladies and gentlemen, Rock and Roll.”

My boyfriend (now The Husband) and I got cable for the first time just so I could watch MTV. I was quite dedicated to it for the first decade.

The Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star was the first music video to air on the new cable television channel, which initially was available only to households in a few areas including parts of New Jersey and Kansas City. MTV went on to revolutionize the music industry and become an influential source of pop culture and entertainment all over our pretty planet,  138 countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, The Middle East, Australia, even Sub-Sahara Africa, all have MTV-branded channels

The original purpose of MTV was to be “music television”, playing music videos 24 hours-a-day, seven days a week. The programming consisted of basic music videos that were introduced by VJs (video jockeys) and provided for free by the record companies. As the record industry recognized MTV’s value as a promotional vehicle, money was invested in making creative, cutting-edge videos. Many directors, including Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Her), David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind), worked on music videos before moving on to feature films. In the 1980s, MTV was incredibly important in promoting the careers of Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince and Duran Duran, whose videos played in heavy rotation.

The VJs became celebrities too. The original five MTV VJs in 1981 were: Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn.

J.J. Jackson, Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Martha Quinn and Alan Hunter Photograph from MTV Networks

During MTV’s first year on the air, very few black artists were included in rotation on the channel. The exceptions were Michael Jackson, Prince, Donna Summer, Tina Turner, and Herbie Hancock. The very first people of color to play on MTV was the British band The Specials, which had white and black musicians. The Specials’ video Rat Race was the the 58th video on that first day. After much protest, including an on-air scolding from David Bowie during an interview, MTV added videos in its regular rotation by Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Lionel Richie, The Pointer Sisters, Kool And The Gang, and Diana Ross.

Eventually, videos from the emerging genres of Rap and Hip Hop would also begin to enter rotation on MTV. By the mid-1980s. you would see videos by Run-DMC, LL Cool J, and the Beastie Boys.

The channel’s iconic tag line “I want my MTV!” was based on a cereal commercial from the 1950s with the slogan “I want my Maypo!”. The campaign featured Pete Townshend, Pat Benatar, Adam Ant, David Bowie, The Police, Kiss, Culture Club, Billy Idol, Hall & Oates, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Lionel Richie, Ric Ocasek, John Mellencamp, Stevie Nicks, Rick Springfield and Mick Jagger, interacting with the MTV logo on-air and encouraging viewers to call their cable or satellite providers and request that MTV be added to their local channel lineups.

MTV’s effect was immediate in places where the channel was carried. Within two months, record stores in areas where MTV was available were selling music that local radio stations were not playing: Men At Work, Bow Wow Wow and the Human League. The channel sparked the Second British Invasion, with British acts in heavy rotation, who had been using music videos for promotion for half a decade.

MTV struggled during its first few years. Conservative cable operators often refused to carry the channel. It developed a reputation for pushing cultural boundaries and taste; the airing of Madonna’s Like A Prayer video in 1989, caused the Christian Right to lose their shit.

Today, MTV’s music video programming is mostly confined to one show, Total Request Live. But, on this day, 36 years ago, it was all music. The first 10 videos to play were:

Video Killed the Radio Star- The Buggles   

You Better Run– Pat Benatar

She Won’t Dance With Me– Rod Stewart

You Better You Bet– The Who

Little Suzi’s On The Up– Ph.D.

We Don’t Talk Anymore– Cliff Richard

Brass in Pocket – The Pretenders       

Time Heals– Todd Rundgren      

Take It On The Run– REO Speedwagon (This video was interrupted after a few seconds due to technical difficulties)

Rockin’ The Paradise– Styx

The post #OnThisGayDay: MTV Airs for the First Time appeared first on The WOW Report.

Everyone in the LGBT community knows that if you’re in the “in crowd,” you get the emails about all the hottest orgies. In his latest totally hilar opus, Michael Henry blows the lid off the best-kept secret in West Hollywood. Co-starring Pete Zias and Michael Lucid, and shot/edited by Paul McGovern Jr., Michael Henry really delves into this hot-button LGBT issue. Enjoy, and be sure to subscribe to Michael Henry’s channel!

The post Watch Now: “You Get The Email?” appeared first on The WOW Report.

Social media influencer Daniel Preda joins Jonny McGovern, Lady Red Couture & Erikatour Aviance for an ALL NEW episode of LOOK at HUH where he reviews, shares stories and spills T about his work in entertainment. 

In the first part, Daniel covers talents such as Tyler Oakley, Britney Spears, Willam, Connor Franta & his boyfriend Joey Graceffa.

Watch Part 1:

In Part 2, Daniel spills T on Giuliana Rancic, Ariana Grande, RuPaul, Wendy Williams & Shane Dawson!

Watch Part 2:

The post HEY QWEEN | Social Media Star Daniel Preda Joins Jonny McGovern on LOOK at HUH appeared first on The WOW Report.