Hollywood’s most stylish, beautiful, and talented women walked the red carpet at the 11th Annual Essence Black Women In Hollywood luncheon at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Honorees included Tessa Thompson, Janelle Monae, Tiffany Haddish, and Black Panther‘s incredible Danai Gurira. But it was Master of None‘s Lena Waithe (above) who brought down the house.

Speaking to crowd that included luminaries like Angela Bassett, Ava DuVernay and Lupita Nyong’o, Waithe urged women to be more open about their sexuality and said they must be beacons for a younger generation.

The actress/writer/producer said she knows why those in the spotlight are “still hiding. Hiding because we don’t want to lose an endorsement deal. Hiding because they want to be ‘normal.’ Hiding because we don’t want to make white folks uneasy. But most of all, hiding because we don’t want to make our own people uncomfortable.”

But, she continued: “Being born gay, black and female is not a revolutionary act. Being proud to be a gay black female is.” Huge applause in the ballroom followed.

She then made a moving reference to one of her favorite movies as a child, The Wizard of Oz.

“There’s this moment in the movie when Dorothy’s presence interrupts the peace of Oz, which forces all the Munchkins to run and hide. So Glinda the Good Witch tells them to stop hiding. She tells them to come out: ‘Come out, wherever you are. Don’t be afraid.’ It’s interesting how things you hear as a kid take on a whole new meaning as an adult. Her words still ring loudly in my ears, especially today,” she said.

“So I ask those of you that are still hiding to come out. Come out, wherever you are, please don’t be afraid. And I hope that you know that I’m here to hold your hand whenever you decide to jump into this wonderful pool of people who refuse to be hidden. The water is warm.”

Powerful. Amazing. Great to hear.

The Black Women In Hollywood Awards ceremony in full when it airs on  OWN this Saturday, March 3 at 10 pm.

Below: Gabourey Sidibe, Janelle Monae, Tina Knowles, Lupita Nyong’o, Angela Bassett, Danai Guria, Retta, and Tia Lowry.

(Photos: MediaPunch; via USA Today)

WOWers, World of Wonder Co-Founder Fenton Bailey, Executive VP of Development Tom Campbell, and WOW Report Editor James St. James have collaborated with reality TV guru and friend of WOW, Andy Cohen, on a weekly Top Ten Countdown of the things from the past week that make us go…WOW!

It’s a pop-culture obsessed hour complete with colorful diatribes, opposing opinions, and a dissection-like discussion that will make your drive home from work more fabulous!

You can now WATCH us recording the WOW Report in our gallery storefront on Hollywood Boulevard, just across the street from Hollywood’s oldest restaurant Musso & Frank!

This week, we’re counting down the top ten stories of 2017 that made us go WOW!  We air TODAY at 3PM EST on SiriusXM, and again at 3PM PST (that’s 6PM EST). You can also catch the show on the SiriusXM app!

Let’s get started…

10) The Heathers Reboot: Hit or Miss? 

We discuss the new reboot of Heathers for the Paramount Network. It was scheduled to premiere next Wednesday, March 7, but it was recently announced that the premiere would be pushed back because of the school shooting in Parkland, FL.

Skip forward to The Heathers Reboot: Hit or Miss? @01:01

9) Netflix Pick: The Toys That Made Us  

James recently watched the docu-series the toys that made us The Toys That Made Us about classic toys we grew up with and shaped us into who we are today. It’s currently streaming on Netflix.

Skip forward to Netflix Pick: The Toys That Made Us @07:35

8) Autassassinophilia: Snuff Said 

You MUST read this true crime article about autassassinophilia – which is a paraphilia in which a person is sexually aroused by the risk of being killed! Read it here!

Skip forward to Autassassinophilia: Snuff Said @13:23

7) Send in the Clones: Streisand’s New Pooches 

Is Babs “playing God?” Barbra Streisand recently had her dead pooch Samantha cloned into two new pup – Ms. Scarlett and Ms. Violet.  Listen in for our take.

Skip forward to Send in the Clones: Streisand’s New Pooches @21:55

6) Flick Pick: Game Night 

While the rest of the country was in line to see Black Panther, James opted for Jason Bateman’s Game Night. Listen in to see what he thought of it.

Skip forward to Flick Pick: Game Night @26:55

5) Mishka Henner & the Art of Money 

How does a painting that’s one day worth nothing suddenly become worth tens of thousands of dollars? Fenton recently had the pleasure of meeting artist Mishka Henner whose series the Golden Ratio of Art has seen his paintings soar in price.

Skip forward to Mishka Henner & the Art of Money @30:36

4) Is Your Standing Desk Killing You?

A couple of years ago, World of Wonder installed standing desks for everyone, but now there’s news that the standing desks may be bad for you?? Could this be true? Read this article from The Washington Post, and listen in to find out.

Skip forward to Is Your Standing Desk Killing You? @38:13

3) Rest in Power: Carl from The Walking Dead 

James mourns the loss of little Carl from The Walking Dead.

Skip forward to Rest in Power: Carl from The Walking Dead @42:55

2) Madonna’s Ray of Light Twenty Years Later 

Madonna‘s 1998 album Ray of Light was released 20 years ago! We discuss the impact the album has had on us. Listen in!

Skip forward to Madonna’s Ray of Light Twenty Years Later @47:47

1) WOW’s Oscar Predictions

We have our own World of Wonder ceremony for our Oscar predictions! Listen in to find out who we voted to win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress!

Skip forward to WOW’s Oscar Predictions @54:27

Resistor of the Week – Monica Lewinsky

Our resistor of the week this week is WOWlebrity Monica Lewinsky who recently wrote an amazing, moving piece for Vanity Fair. Read it here.

Skip forward to Resistor of the Week – Monica Lewinsky @01:00:13

Listen in at 3:00PM EST and again at 3:00 PST (6 PM EST) on SiriusXM! Or listen whenever you want on the SiriusXM App!

And be sure to give your ears the gift of THE WOW REPORT on Radio Andy SiriusXM EVERY Friday.

Do something this weekend that makes YOU go WOW!!!

The New York Times is reporting Trump has been frustrated with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, after his top secret security clearance was downgraded this week and a report came out that officials from four countries had discussed ways to manipulate him during their dealings on foreign policy.

Trump has vented at times that the couple should have never come to the White House and should leave, WH aides told the newspaper.

Trump’s son-in-law and first daughter have also been a target of White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly‘s frustration with Ivanka Trump since he entered the West Wing last July. Kelly was NOT happy about her recent trip to South Korea as an unofficial U.S. Ambassador.

But there’s no love lost on the other end either. Ivanka and Jared have had it with with Kelly, too. According to multiple people familiar with the couple’s thinking, they see him as hostile to their continued presence in the White House.

(Photo, YouTube; via CNN)

MGM Archives via Wikimedia Commoms

March 3, 1903 – Adrian

In Sunset Boulevard (1950), Gloria Swanson playing Norma Desmond says: “We had faces then”. For certain, yet more importantly, female stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood had clothes.

Garbo in “Romance” (1931)

During that era, the single-named designer Adrian created the most glamorous and widely seen clothing in the world. Ironically, his glittering gowns and flamboyant ensembles made for Jean Harlow, Norma Scherer, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo were film costumes, not high fashion. As chief costume designer for MGM, Adrian did more than design, he transformed actors into glamorous movie stars. He designed costumes for over 250 films and his screen credits usually read: “Gowns by Adrian”. Seen by millions of film fans across our pretty planet, his costumes were the most copied clothes in the world.

He was born Adrian Adolph Greenberg; his parents owned a millinery shop in Connecticut. He studied at the NY School for Fine and Applied Arts (now Parsons) in 1922 before transferring to the Paris campus. There he was hired by Irving Berlin to design costumes for Berlin’s The Music Box Revue. Natacha Rambova, Rudolph Valentino’s bisexual wife, herself a talented designer, saw his work and hired him for A Sainted Devil (1924) and he was soon hired as head designer for Paramount Pictures. He moved over to MGM in 1928 and stayed until 1941.

In a 1937 interview he said:

“Few people in an audience watching a great screen production realize the importance of any gown worn by the feminine star, the fact that it was definitely planned to mirror some definite mood, to be as much a part of the play as the lines or the scenery, seldom occurs to them.”

Proving a woman didn’t need a perfect figure to look gorgeous, he drew attention to the garment itself to camouflage an actor’s imperfections. Crawford was short with broad shoulders and large hips, so Adrian created her signature look using padded shoulders that made Crawford’s hips look smaller. Garbo was flat chested and straight-waisted yet in her costumes for Mata Hari (1931), she has curves.

Preferring simplicity, his talent was for draping featuring bold outlines and long tapered waistlines with diagonal fastenings.

Adrian’s greatest skill was his ability to absorb high fashion trends from Paris, rework them for a particular star, and amp up the look to enhance a film’s dramatic story line. He transformed the traditional studio wardrobe department into a full-fledged creative machine in the manner of the fashion workrooms in Paris.

Shearer with Leslie Howard in “Romeo And Juliet, MGM via YouTube

When designing for period pieces, Adrian overlooked historical accuracy, making the dresses more dynamic onscreen. Shearer’s beaded cap in George Cukor’s Romeo And Juliet (1936) was thoroughly modern and became all the rage among American women. I am not sure what era MGM was going for, but the disagreements between Adrian, art director Cedric Gibbons, and set designer Oliver Messel, resulted in Romeo And Juliet’s incoherent look, pleasing no one. But Adrian’s gowns, what ever period inspired him, are the star, and copies of them were everywhere that year.

The wide-shouldered white organdy dress worn by Crawford in Letty Lynton (1932) was widely copied; Macy’s Cinema Shop which sold dresses based on “Gowns by Adrian” sold half a million of them. Some retail garments were marketed as having the “Adrian silhouette”. MGM used Adrian’s costumes as a promotional tool and allowed magazines to publish his designs and techniques so that women could make them at home.

The December 1932 issue of Fortune Magazine wrote an in-depth piece about the success of MGM Studios. The focusing of the article was Irving Thalberg, the studio’s production head at the time. Thalberg said that the praise for MGM’s success should really go to two others: art director Cedric Gibbons and costume designer Adrian. Adrian routinely produced 50 sketches a day and earned $1,000 a week at MGM.

With Garbo

Camille (1936), with Garbo, is nearly an entirely gay film, almost every actor, notably Robert Taylor, involved, as well as the director (Cukor) and all the designers, were either L, G, B T or Q.

Adrian designed 14 gowns for Garbo for The Two Faced Woman (1941) but MGM wanted low-cut gowns that both Adrian and Garbo loathed, so the pair left MGM. Adrian:

“It was because of Garbo that I left MGM. In her last picture they wanted to make her a sweater girl, a real American type. I said, ‘When the glamour ends for Garbo, it also ends for me…’ When Garbo walked out of the studio, glamour went with her and so did I.”

He returned to MGM one more time a decade later for Lovely To Look At (1952).

When those nasty Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, the couture houses closed. American designers had always looked to Parisian fashions for their inspiration and they were also affected by the fabric restrictions during WW II. In 1941, Adrian opened his salon in Beverly Hills, Adrian Ltd, with new looks that were casual, practical and durable.

His first collection was shown at the May Company department store in L.A. and he was soon selling his designs in department stores across the USA. His ready to wear line was called “Adrian Original” and his couture clothing was labeled “Adrian Custom”. To remain exclusive, he allowed just one store in each city to sell his collections. He designed suits that served as both career clothing for the emerging class of professional women and as travel wear. He had an ability to seam and piece complimentary gradations of striped woolens, varying their widths and placement into seemingly endless pattern variations. None of his hundreds of suit designs were exactly the same. This creativity and elevated level of custom-made quality were even more amazing considering it was a wartime era.

Katharine Hepburn in “Philadelphia Story” via YouTube

He frequently designed prints of animals, such as the famous “Roan Stallion” evening gown, now part of the 100 Adrian costumes in the Costume Institute at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the The Egg And I (1947) at-home dress with its furious barnyard hens. After a trip to Africa in 1949, animal and reptile prints were used for a gown of tiger-skin taffeta and a hooded evening suit made from heavy silk that looked like an iridescent snakeskin.

Metropolitan Museum

He also produced fragrances, notably “Saint” and “Sinner” perfumes and “Gilbert” cologne. Gilbert was his father’s name and he sometimes used the name Adrian Gilbert professionally.

The Academy Award for Best Costume Design wasn’t introduced until 1948, so Adrian was never nominated. Yet, he was the definitive force behind 1930s Hollywood glamour, probably the greatest fashion decade.

Although openly gay, in 1939 Adrian entered into one of those modern marriage arrangements with actor Janet Gaynor, a lesbian, in response to the anti-gay attitudes of studio heads, particularly Louis B. Mayer, the ‘M’ of MGM studios.

With Jeanette MacDonald, MGM Archives via YouTube

During his time at MGM, Adrian worked with the biggest female stars: Garbo, Shearer, Harlow, Jeanette MacDonald and Katharine Hepburn. He worked with Crawford 28 times. He was Garbo’s designer of choice over the course of her career. The Eugénie hat he created for her in the film Romance (1931) became a sensation and influenced millinery style for the rest of the decade.

Shearer, Crawford and Rosalind Russell in “The Women”, MGM via YouTube

Adrian was most famous for those evening gown designs worn by these fabulous females, and nowhere do you get to see his range quite like as in The Women (1939). The Women was filmed in black and white, but it originally included a 10-minute fashion show filmed in Technicolor, which featured Adrian’s most outré designs. The scene is cut in most versions released, but it has been restored to the film by Turner Classic Movies. Adrian also went over the top with his extravagant costumes for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and theatrically opulent dresses for Camille (1936) and Marie Antoinette (1938).

He had a little antique shop on Sunset and a house in Palm Springs, but after suffering a heart attack in 1952, Adrian closed his businesses and retired to a ranch in Brazil with Gaynor, where they both spent time painting. He returned to the USA in 1958 to design costumes for the Broadway musical Camelot, when he suffered a second, fatal heart attack. Adrian was gone at just 56-years-old. However, there has always been speculation that his death was actually a suicide. Gaynor lived to be 77-years-old and left this world in 1986 at the house in Palm Springs.

All those astonishing gowns of his design, yet Adrian is now probably best remembered for a little blue and white gingham dress and a pair of red shoes. He designed all the costumes for The Wizard Of Oz (1939) from Judy Garland’s dress to Glinda’s gown, flying monkey hats to the Scarecrow, including 100 costumes for little people in the Munchkinland.

Via YouTube

He designed two test pairs of Ruby Slippers. Though the shoes were silver in the books, Adrian made them ruby red for Technicolor film. One, the ‘Arabian test pair,’ had curling toes and heels, but they detracted from Dorothy’s farm girl image.

Each ruby slipper had 2,300 sequins, and there were at least 10 pairs. One pair was a half size larger for Garland to wear in the afternoon after her feet were swollen.

One pair of the slippers were auctioned by MGM’s wardrobe department in 1970 for $15,000. The anonymous donor gave them to the Smithsonian Institution in 1979. In 2000, another pair of ruby slippers sold for $666,000 at auction.

Jessica Biel
Camila Cabello
David Faustino
Ira Glass
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Julie Bowen
Laura Harring
Lil’ Flip
Ronan Keating
Stacie Orrico
Tyler Florence
Tone Loc

If you couldn’t tell from my face, I take my fitness very seriously. Get on my level and check out my latest @gaiam picks from @amazon @amazonsports_outdoors (link in bio)

A post shared by Jessica Biel (@jessicabiel) on Jan 29, 2018 at 10:00am PST

Rapper Rick Ross has reportedly been put on life support after being hospitalized after taking ill at his home in Davie, Florida. Someone called 911 at 3:30AM on Thursday to say the person in distress was

“unresponsive with heavy breathing.”

According to TMZ, Rick is being treated in the hospital’s cardiac unit, after it was suspected that he suffered a heart attack. He continues to undergo treatment at the hospital and he has been,

“hooked up to a machine that’s taking over the function of his heart and lungs.”

Sources tell TMZ Rick has been placed on ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, which is a technique used to oxygenate his blood outside of his body, before it’s pumped back in.

His daughter Toie Roberts posted a pic on Instagram,

“You the best daddy ever.”

But hip-hop artist Fat Trel denied his friend was on life support saying he was in hospital and he had spoken to him on the phone and a family member strongly denied Rick was hospitalized.

Many of his pals and peers took to Twitter wishing him well and asking people to pray for him like LL Cool J, Missy Elliott and Lil Wayne,

Ross has a history of medical issues and according to TMZ suffered two seizures on initially blaming it on a lack of sleep. Ross changed his lifestyle and diet, and slimmed down, dropping up to 100lbs. and is now with fitness model, Briana Camille. They had a child together in September.

Get well soon, Rick.

(Photo, Instagram; via Daily Mail)

MGM via YouTube

In 1987, Cher was still better known for her singing than acting, but when Moonstruck was released, she became a full-fledged movie star.

Moonstruck was released in December 1987 in NYC, and then nationally in January 1988. It was nominated for six Oscars at the 60th Academy Awards, winning for Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress.

In Moonstruck, Cher plays Loretta Castorini, a widow living with her Sicilian family in Brooklyn. Despite being superstitious about love, she agrees to marry Johnny Cammareri, played by Danny Aiello, until she meets his jaded brother Ronny, played by Nicholas Cage, agrees to see La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera House with him, and soon realizes “I love him awful”.

Director Norman Jewison labeled his film: “an operatic multi-generational romantic comedy”, which is just one reason that it grossed an impressive $100,000,000 and won Oscars for Cher, Olympia Dukakis and screenwriter John Patrick Shanley.

MGM via YouTube

30 years ago, Cher wasn’t new to film work; she had been nominated for an Academy Award for Silkwood (1984), but she was worried that her fans still wouldn’t take her seriously as an actor. Just months before Moonstruck was released, The Witches Of Eastwick and Suspect were  hits at the box-office, so her movie career was  hot. Cher:

”It wasn’t like Mask (1985), which I felt I just had to do. I was a little frightened because there seemed to be all kinds of possibilities and all kinds of risks here. I wondered if, at this point in my career when there might be some people out there interested in seeing my movies, they would accept me in this role.”

In the film, the ”before” Loretta is a dowdy gray-haired woman and the ”after” is when she falls in love with Ronny. Cher:

”But, I much preferred playing her ‘before” than ”after”. The freedom is not interesting to me because that’s something I know. Yet I don’t think of her as being constrained, exactly. My idea was to play her more as bossy and controlled.”

Cher, is Armenian and Cherokee, and she didn’t know how Italian families behaved. Cher:

”I didn’t come from that kind of family. I really didn’t relate exactly to it, but I had a sense of it, like a distant sense of it. Not like something that you can relate to first hand. I’ve known some families like that and I got feelings of it. After a while I thought I might be able to do this.”

Her Moonstruck family reminded her of her ex-husband’s family. Cher:

”It kind of reminded me of Sonny Bono’s family. Everybody eating and talking and shouting… but you have such good times.”

Cher faced solid competition in the Best Actress category at the Academy Awards 30 years ago: Glenn Close for Fatal Attraction, Holly Hunter for Broadcast News, Sally Kirkland for Anna, and Cher’s friend Meryl Streep for Ironweed. Moonstruck was a contender in several categories that year:

Best Picture, losing to The Last Emperor

Best Director for Jewison, losing to Bernardo Bertolucci for The Last Emperor

Best Original Screenplay for Shanley

Best Supporting Actress for  Dukakis

Best Supporting Actor for Vincent Gardenia, losing to Sean Connery in The Untouchables

The Oscar was Cher’s first major award, after a 25-year career in music and television. It wasn’t until 2000, that Cher earned her first Grammy Award, Best Dance Recording for Believe. Three years later, Cher won an Emmy Award for her special Cher: The Farewell Tour. With these three awards, Cher remains only a Tony Award away from the coveted title of EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony). Only 12 entertainers can claim that achievement so far. Maybe she can play Mame on Broadway; that would be as big a hit as the current revival of Hello, Dolly!.

SPOILER ALERT!

Seriously, turn back now unless you want to learn a MAJOR spoiler from the latest episde on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3!! I’m not going to rehash the whole episode and just to be clear, I write for The Wow Report but I have nothing to do with Drag Race. I’m not biased, and know nothing beyond what I watch on TV, just like you.

On last Thursday’s episode as one of the night’s top 2, BenDeLaCreme faced off against BeBe Zahara Benet to Deborah Cox’s Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here. DeLa won the lip sync. She announced she would be bringing Morgan McMichaels, who DeLa eliminated in the first episode (and, as you saw, had a bit of drama with on this episode, but they made up. I think.)

DeLa then had the apparently IMPOSSIBLE choice of whether to eliminate, Shangela, Trixie or Kennedy… well, in the end the decision wasn’t SO hard as s she said to the judges, that this was

“the easiest decision I’ve had to make all season. I’m going home.“

DeLa told Billboard about making her shocking decision.

“There were so many weird little fractions that fell into place that all had to align perfectly for what happened to happen. So, the whole idea for even switching the name on the lipstick actually came from an ongoing joke that Trixie and I were always making on the show. We were like,

‘You know what, if we win the lip sync, we’re just gonna write Michelle‘s name on the lipstick.‘

[laughs] And we always joked about using whiteout to do that, but of course there’s no white-out anywhere on set.

However, it came to me on the episode when all the girls returned — I remembered that on episode two, Thorgy Thor was painting her fingernails with whiteout. So I went over to Thorgy and said,

‘Thorgy, do you still have that whiteout in your bag?‘

And she was like,

‘Yeah, why do you need it?‘

I just said,

‘Don’t worry about it.‘

I shoved it in my bra, and the rest is history. But it was like, if all of those pieces hadn’t fallen into place it couldn’t have happened.

I came on and never expected to do as well as I did, because you can’t expect to do well or you won’t, right? Like, you have to always be keeping failure in mind if you’re going to be kick enough ass to succeed. I was honestly dumbfounded by my own performance in the competition so far, and I never envisioned feeling like I’d succeeded this much on the show.

… in that moment, the others of the top five were so upset at the idea that they would have to go home at this point. And I realized,

‘Oh, each of them feels like there’s still something that they want to prove. And I actually feel fully satisfied with my experience.‘

Like I said, it was all of these little pieces coming together. I don’t think I would have felt that way under any other circumstances. It was like,

‘Oh, at this point, I have shown the world that I am capable, and I don’t have to keep going along with a rule that has never sat well with me.‘

I have gotten a lot of responses, and the majority of it is mostly supportive…. my message that I’ve tried to convey through my actions on the competition, and in my life, is that you create your own rules, you create your own success. It’s that old RuPaul quote,

‘What other people think of me is none of my business.‘

So you know, once the heat of the moment has passed, I hope that those people able to open their minds. Like,

‘Oh, if I don’t get that job promotion, that doesn’t mean I failed. If I don’t have that new car, it doesn’t mean I failed.‘

RuPaul has done incredible things for our community, and incredible things for me personally. Not just bringing me on TV, but being a light in the dark when I was a child. When I was a young, queer kid in the middle of nowhere, I remember seeing RuPaul on the red carpet of the MTV Music Awards and being like,

‘I don’t understand what I’m looking at, but I understand that something about this makes me feel like I’m not alone.‘

So do I wish there was less conflict on Drag Race? Sure, I think I’ve made that abundantly clear. But I also think that there are a million more incredible things about Drag Race and what it symbolizes and the way it shapes our culture.”

You can read the whole interview here.

Super excited for tonight’s episode of @rupaulsdragrace #allstars3 – tune in on @vh1 #bendelacreme #teamdela #rpdrallstars3

A post shared by BenDeLaCreme (@bendelacreme) on Mar 1, 2018 at 2:56pm PST

#aboutlastnight could not have been more overjoyed to share a vulnerable and proud moment with my loving Seattle community. Thank you to everyone in Seattle who has and continues to support me over the last decade. Thank you to @waxiemoon @rubymimosa @onetheonlyinga @faggedyrandy @realmisskittybaby and all the other wonderful friends and performers who keep this place the place I want to call home. Thank you @gus_lanza for being the most wonderful supportive boyfriend. Thank you Hallie Kuperman and @centuryballroom for continuing to provide a space that we all can call home. Thank you @thekevinheard for being the man behind the camera in this photo and the man behind 90% of what it is I do in the world.Thank you to all the many fans who are reaching out to me with love. I can’t tell you how exciting it is to see the energy that you put into the world to come back at you 1 million fold. I love you all. #bendelacreme #teamdela #rpdrallstars3

A post shared by BenDeLaCreme (@bendelacreme) on Mar 2, 2018 at 12:56pm PST

#teamdela

A post shared by BenDeLaCreme (@bendelacreme) on Mar 1, 2018 at 10:50pm PST

(Photo, Instagram; via Billboard)

Anthony Comstock via Wikimedia Commons

March 3,1873 – Congress Enacts the Comstock Law

The Comstock Law was a federal act for the “Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use”. The Act criminalized the use of the U.S. Postal Service to send any of the following items: Erotica, Contraception, Abortifacients, Sex Toys, Sex Education Materials, and personal letters with any sexual content.

The driving force behind the original anti-smut statutes was New Yorker, Anthony Comstock. A devout Christian and closet case, he was offended by what he saw in NYC streets. He thought the town was over-run with prostitutes, perverts and pornography.

In the late 1860s, Comstock began supplying the police with information to facilitate raids on sex workers and he became noted for his anti-obscenity crusade. He was especially offended by advertisements for birth control devices, and he focused the contraceptive industry as one of his main targets. Comstock felt certain that the availability of contraceptives alone promoted lust and lewdness.

In 1872, Comstock traveled to Washington DC with an anti-obscenity bill, including a ban on contraceptives, that he had drafted himself. The next year, on March 3, 1873, Congress passed the new law, known as The Comstock Act. It defined contraceptives as obscene and illicit, making it a federal offense to disperse birth control through the mail or across state lines.

This law was the first of its kind in the Western world. But, the American public didn’t pay attention to the new law. Comstock was jubilant over his legislative victory. Soon after the Federal law was on the books, 24 States enacted their own versions.

New England had the most restrictive laws in the country. In Massachusetts, anyone distributing contraceptives, or information about contraceptives, faced imprisonment. In Connecticut, even using birth control was prohibited by law. Married couples could be arrested for using birth control in the privacy of their own homes. Law enforcement mostly looked the other way, but the statutes remained on the books.

Birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger made it her mission to challenge the Comstock Act. The first successful change in the laws came from Sanger’s 1916 arrest for opening the first birth-control clinic in America. The case that grew out of her arrest resulted in the 1918 Crane decision, which allowed women to use birth control for therapeutic purposes.

The next amendment to the Comstock Law came with the Circuit Court of Appeals decision, United States v. One Package in 1936. The decision made it possible for doctors to distribute contraceptives across state lines. Sanger had been instrumental in maneuvering behind the scenes to bring the matter before the court. While this decision did not eliminate the problem of the restrictive “chastity laws” on the state level, physicians could now legally mail birth control devices and information throughout the country.

Many American citizens complained that the new immigrants were tainting the moral fabric of the USA with their radical political beliefs and their permissive attitudes about sex. They worried that members of the lower classes were procreating at a faster rate, in part because better educated, more affluent women were postponing their childbearing years to lead their own lives, free from the dictates of fathers and husbands… or children.

The Comstock Law brought the successfully prosecution of more than 36,000 defendants and destroyed over 160 tons of obscene literature under Comstock’s role as Special U.S. Agent. At first, Comstock targeted mail-order services and shops that sold cheaply produced nude photographs. Poor and uneducated defendants were the first to be prosecuted by Comstock who often failed present a defense on their own behalf.

Comstock also targeted art gallery owners for selling European paintings containing naked or partially clad women. But, Comstock’s attempted censorship of traditional art brought a groundswell of opposition. The NY Times criticized Comstock for overreaching.

By 1887 many mainstream Americans who had originally supported the Comstock Law were reconsidering that support with concerns over Free Speech. Comstock was not deterred, continuing to prosecute alleged smut peddlers.

By 1900, 24 States had their own versions of the Comstock Act; many were more stringent than the Federal law. The Comstock Law itself was revised several times in the 20th century, but prosecutions for violations of the federal statute continued, even as Americans became increasingly diverse and tolerant. Challenges were made to the constitutionality of the Comstock Law, most of them on First Amendment grounds. Yet, the Supreme Court continued to uphold the Comstock Law into the early 1970s.

Major parts of the Comstock Acts hinge on definitions, particularly of obscenity. Though the courts originally adopted the British Hicklin Test, in 1957 an American test was put into place in Roth v. United States, in which it was determined that obscenity was material whose “dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest” to the “average person, applying contemporary community standards,” and was, “utterly without redeeming social importance.”

Lili St. Cyr (1952) banned, photo via Wikimedia Commons, photographer unknown

The Comstock Law began to change with the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Miller v. California, when the Supremes ruled that material is obscene if: ”(1) the work, taken as a whole by an average person applying contemporary community standards, appeals to the prurient interest; (2) the work depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and (3) the work, when taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”.

Miller v. California basically says that The First Amendment allows citizens to engage in Free Speech, the Freedom of the Press, the Freedom of Religion and the Right to Assemble. But, these freedoms are not awarded to any American citizen if they put the general population in any sort of harm with their speech, assembly, press or religion.

The verdict of Miller v. California created the ‘Miller Test”. This test is still used to define what is considered obscene or unsuitable for the general public. The Miller Test will take a publication or any piece of art and decide how dirty it is, how it may offend people, and decide whether it is protected by the First Amendment.

Although the Comstock Law was never challenged on grounds that it violated the Miller standards for obscenity, the SCOTUS declared the law unconstitutional in 1983.

The Miller Test is still used today. Recently, Alabama, home of petite, perjury embracing Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, used the Miller Test to uphold a law making it illegal to sell sex toys (this is not satire). Mississippi and Virginia also currently bans the sale of dildos.

In June 2006, the federal government brought a case against JM Productions of Chatsworth, California in order to classify commercial pornography that specifically shows actual semen being ejaculated as obscene. The four films that were the subject of the case are entitled American Bukkake 13, Gag Factor 15, Gag Factor 18 and Filthy Things 6.

Only Supreme Court can revise its decision that established the Miller Test. The soon to be abolished National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) has been bound by The Miller Test when presenting works of art.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006) takes on the X-rating of films and disparities between Hollywood studios and independent films, between gay and straight sexual situations, between male and female sexual depictions, and between violence and sexual content. The films shows that certain films have been further censored than their straight, white, male counterparts due to gay sex, even if implied, African-American sex, or female pleasure as opposed to male pleasure.

Trump never won an Emmy for “The Apprentice”, so when Baldwin won his for playing Trump on SNL, he said, “Mr. President, here’s your Emmy.”

“Alex Baldwin, whose dieing mediocre career was saved by his impersonation of me on SNL, now says playing DJT was agony for him. Alex, it was also agony for those who were forced to watch. You were terrible. Bring back Darrell Hammond, much funnier and a far greater talent!”

He later deleted the tweet and reposted correcting Alex to say Alec and changing “dieing” to “dying.”

Baldwin threw back some well-deserved shade at his Orangeness,

“Agony though it may be, I’d like to hang in there for the impeachment hearings, the resignation speech, the farewell helicopter ride to Mara-a-Lago. You know. The Good Stuff. That we’ve all been waiting for.”

After which Baldwin called his brother, radio host Daniel Baldwin, on Syracuse’s TK99 in character as Trump to complain about the actor’s portrayal of him on SNL.

“Everyone knows that Stephen is the best Baldwin…“

Watch… or rather, listen.

(Photo, SNL; via Yahoo)

Call Me By Your Name is up for 5 Oscars tomorrow night; Best Actor, Timothée Chalamet, Best Adapted Screenplay, James Ivory), Best Original Song, Sufjan Stevens for Mystery of Love as well as Best Picture.

But any noms for “Best Digital Effects Removing an Actor’s Private Parts” –that’s a big no.

According to the internet’s boyfriend, the length of Armie Hammer‘s shorts turned out to be a “wardrobe malfunction”, to coin a phrase. Apparently his balls kept popping out during filming.

Hammer told Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM radio show,

“There was a few times where they had to go back and digitally remove my balls from the movie. They were short shorts. Whadya you gonna do?“

Cohen said,

“Short shorts and big balls is what you’re saying.“

Guess so.

Watch.

(via Vice)

Photo via YouTube

March 4, 1913 – John Garfield:

”I lived in a bad neighborhood. I knew so many things a boy shouldn’t know. I did so many things a boy shouldn’t do.”

Before there was Sean Penn, Harvey Keitel, or Robert De Niro, even before Marlon Brando and James Dean, there was John Garfield. Mostly forgotten now, he brought an intense realism to film acting in the 1940s. He had an edge and a toughness that was well earned. Yet, just as Garfield’s career was at its apex, he became another victim of the notorious ”Red Scare” at the dawn of the 1950s. Garfield exuded a raw masculinity that hadn’t been seen before in film.

As a kid, I used to come home from school, let myself in with the key I kept around my neck, practice the piano, and then settle in for The 4:30 Movie on KXLY. I loved the film melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s. Those movies, featuring gangsters, cops and private dicks, were suffused with grit and authenticity. By the time I was 12, I had seen nearly the complete Warner Bros. catalogue with Errol Flynn, James Cagney, and Humphrey Bogart.

Garfield, an actor I saw in no more than six or seven pictures during my boyhood, left a really big impression. He was like Cagney, a tough guy from the streets of NYC, except with a deeper foreboding. I sensed that he had been wronged; yet I knew that he could take care of himself, that he would never submit to his oppressors, not willingly. I knew he was a fighter.

He was born Jacob Julius Garfinklel, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, and he grew up in poverty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His mother died when he was just seven-years old, and he spent the rest of his childhood living passed around to various relatives.

As a kid, he joined a gang and was expelled from more than one school. But, his teachers at P.S. 45 saw something special in him. He was enrolled in a speech class to fix his stammer, and he was encouraged to take acting classes. As Garfield wryly noted:

”If I hadn’t become an actor, I might have become Public Enemy Number One.”

He made his Broadway debut in 1932, but Garfield’s big ambition was to join The Group Theatre founded by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford. This bunch of young actors, writers, and directors, many of whom would become famous, were pursuing a bolder, more socially aware form of theatre.

His big break came with The Group Theatre’s production of Clifford Odets’ Awake And Sing (1935), about struggling Jewish family in the Bronx. Odets, who had known Garfield for years, championed him at first, but when he was passed over for the lead role, boxer Joe Bonaparte, in Odets’ next play, Golden Boy in 1937 (instead, he played Siggie, the cab driver, a supporting role), he was conflicted about whether or not to remain with the Group or go to Hollywood and become a star. Ironically, Garfield who had fought with his fists in the Bronx and had given up boxing for public speaking and acting, was not given the lead role when he had served as the inspiration for Odets. Bruised, he split for Hollywood before the play closed.

Warner Bros. even agreed to a provision in his contract with them that allowed Garfield to take time off to work on stage. For his first featured film role, in Four Daughters (1938), he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Warner Bros. started to build him up, but he was not easy to work with, rejecting roles in lesser films, even if it meant suspension. Garfield:

”I was suspended only 11 times. I served my time and took it like a sport. They taught me the business, and they made me a star. They took their chances with a cocky kid from the Lower East Side who still talked out of the corner of his mouth. I appreciate all that.”

When WW II began, Garfield tried to enlist, but was rejected because he had a heart murmur. Instead, he played servicemen in films such as 1943’s Destination Tokyo and Pride Of The Marines (1945). To support the war effort, he and his friend Bette Davis co-founded The Hollywood Canteen, a place where servicemen could go to dance and have fun. I am not certain that Garfield danced with the sailors before they shipped off, but I like to think he did.

With Lana Turner in “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, MGM via YouTube

After the war, his performances had a darker mood and volatility and brooding intensity. His performances in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Humoresque (1946), and Body And Soul (1947) still seem astoundingly good to me. If you compare Garfield’s adulterous killer in The Postman Always Rings Twice with Jack Nicholson’s in the steamy 1981 remake, Nicholson’s is erotic and highly charged, whereas Garfield’s Post is stamped with a much subtler type of sexuality. Even so, his performance pushed the envelope in 1946.

With Canada Lee in “Body And Soul”

He was Oscar nominated for Body And Soul. But, along with Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, and Lee J. Cobb, plus 150 others, Garfield’s name was published in the notorious anti-communist brochure Red Channels in 1950.

Garfield was forced to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1951. He denied being a communist, but refused to name names, claiming he knew no communists in the industry. His unwillingness to rat on his friends meant his film career was basically finished.

The stress took its toll. He returned to NYC hoping to work on Broadway which had no blacklist. A week later he was found dead in his apartment, taken by a heart attack. He was just 39-years-old.

In Body And Soul, with a screenplay by blacklistee Abraham Polonsky and directed by name-namer Robert Rossen, Garfield refuses to throw a fight, losing his money but redeeming his soul.

Garfield had said that actors could never do their best work before they were 40-years-old. He left this world just a few months short of that milestone. I wonder how many great performances were missed because the Hollywood blacklist killed John Garfield.

A liberal Democrat and a patriot, Garfield was a hero in an era of cowardice. In the words of his friend Polonsky:

”Garfield defended his streetboy’s honor, and they killed him for it.”

His funeral was the largest in NYC since Rudolph Valentino’s, with over 30,000 fans crowding the streets outside of Campbell’s Funeral Home. Shortly afterward, the HUAC closed its investigation of Garfield, leaving him exonerated.

In The Exorcist (1973), directed by William Friedkin, the investigator played by Lee J. Cobb, Garfield’s pal from The Group Theater, tells the haunted priest, played by Jason Miller, that he looks like a boxer… like John Garfield in Body And Soul. At the end of The Exorcist, the investigator shows up at the house of Linda Blair’s possessed girl, too late to save the priest from the devil.

Chaz Bono
David Schiff
Wash Westmoreland
Traver Rains
Bryan Rabin
Doron Ofir
Andrea Bowen
Whitney Port
Len Wiseman
Ivy Queen
Patsy Kensit
Evan Dando
Sam Taylor-Wood

Throwing Like a Viking, my brand new @unspokenyoyos Murmur. Such an amazingly smooth and fun YoYo. T-shirt by Mr #throwsandbrews @thomasvelto #yoyo #throws

A post shared by Chaz Bono (@therealchazbono) on Jan 31, 2018 at 8:03pm PST

Via YouTube

I hope that when I finally win my Academy Award that I will be as witty as Ruth Gordon during her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress when she took home her little gold man for her performance in Rosemary’s Baby 50 years ago. Gordon:

“I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is. The first film that I was ever in was in 1915 and here we are and it’s 1969. Actually, I don’t know why it took me so long; though I don’t think, you know, that I’m backward.” Anyway. Thank you, Roman. And thank you, Mia. And thank all of you who voted for me. And all of you who didn’t, please excuse me.”

Gordon was presented her Oscar by Tony Curtis on April 14, 1969 at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It was the 41st annual Academy Awards, honoring films released in 1968 (50 years ago!)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on the bestselling 1967 novel by Ira Levin. The film starred Mia Farrow, and featured John Cassavetes, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Patsy Kelly, and, in his feature film debut, Charles Grodin. It is the story of a young bride (Farrow) who moves into a new apartment in an historic NYC building with nosy neighbors. She soon gets pregnant.

Beside Gordon, Rosemary’ Baby was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Also that year:

Actor:

Cliff Robertson for Charly (Winner)

Alan Arkin – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Alan Bates – The Fixer

Ron Moody – Oliver!

Peter O’Toole – The Lion In Winter

Actor in a Supporting Role:

Jack Albertson – The Subject Was Roses (Winner)

Seymour Cassel – Faces

Daniel Massey – Star!

Jack Wild – Oliver!

Gene Wilder – The Producers

Actress

Katharine Hepburn – The Lion In Winter (Winner)

Barbra Streisand – Funny Girl (Winner)

Patricia Neal – The Subject Was Roses

Vanessa Redgrave – Isadora

Joanne Woodward – Rachel, Rachel

Actress in a Supporting Role:

Ruth Gordon – Rosemary’s Baby (Winner, after being encouraged)

Lynn Carlin – Faces

Sondra Locke – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Kay Medford –Funny Girl

Estelle Parsons – Rachel, Rachel

Cinematography

Romeo And Juliet – Pasqualino De Santis (Winner)

Funny Girl – Harry Stradling

Ice Station Zebra –Daniel L. Fapp

Oliver! – Oswald Morris

Star! – Ernest Laszlo

Direction

Oliver! – Carol Reed (Winner)

The Battle Of Algiers – Gillo Pontecorvo

The Lion In Winter – Anthony Harvey

Romeo And Juliet – Franco Zeffirelli

2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick

Original Screenplay

The Producers – Mel Brooks (Winner)

The Battle Of Algiers – Franco Solinas and Gillo Pontecorvo

Faces – John Cassavetes

Hot Millions – Ira Wallach and Peter Ustinov

2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke

Adapted Screenplay

The Lion In Winter – James Goldman

The Odd Couple – Neil Simon

Oliver! – Vernon Harris

Rachel, Rachel – Stewart Stern

Rosemary’s Baby – Roman Polanski (Wiener)

Best Picture

Oliver!  (Winner)

Funny Girl

The Lion In Winter

Rachel, Rachel

Romeo And Juliet

Oliver! became the first, and so far, the only, G-rated film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. In contrast, the following year would see the only X-rated film to win Best Picture, Midnight Cowboy.

The presenters included: Ingrid Bergman, Diahann Carroll, Jane Fonda, Rosalind Russell, Tony Curtis, Bob Hope, Burt Lancaster, Henry Mancini and Marni Nixon, Walter Matthau, Gregory Peck, Sidney Poitier, Don Rickles and Natalie Wood.

For pure nuttiness, Aretha Franklin sang the song Funny Girl from Funny Girl and Frank Sinatra sang Star! from Star!.

The year was notable for the first, and so far, only tie for Best Actress and the only acting category tie. For 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. It was the only Academy Award he would ever win.

On” M*A*S*H” via YouTube

My fellow Oregonian, David Ogden Stiers, a two-time Emmy nominee, who joined the cast of M*A*S*H in 1977 as the arrogant but charming aristocrat Charles Emerson Winchester III, died yeaterday.

Not from New England at all, he was born in Peoria. Stiers threw himself into the world of the theater, his training ranging from The Julliard School, to doing Shakespeare in regional theatre. He was also in improv comedy troupe with Rob Reiner and WKRP In Cincinatti’s Howard Hesseman, a range of skills and tones that served him well when he signed on for M*A*S*H in the show’s sixth season.

Slipping into the tony Boston sensibilities of Charles Winchester III, Stiers quickly fell into the popular show’ s rhythms, setting himself at reliably comic odds with Alan Alda’s Hawkeye Pierce. Unlike his predecessor, the more openly buffoonish and corrupt Frank Burns (Larry Linville), Winchester showed his character’s more rounded edges on a regular basis, as Stiers navigated between withering condescension, emotional death, and the show’s still-lively air of prankish mischief. M*A*S*H has been experiencing a popular renaissance, as it marks 35 years since the series finale that drew an astounding 106 million viewers.

The actor said he kept his gayness under wraps for years because he feared coming out of the closet would hurt his career. Stiers:

“I would say that many of my fears were in modern times self-invented. I’ve been working internally on whether they were the problem, or if I just continued using them as an excuse.”

He said he thought staying quiet about his sexuality would keep his income secure. Stiers:

“I enjoy working, and even though many have this idealistic belief that the entertainment industry and studios like Walt Disney are gay friendly, they weren’t always. For the most part they are, but that doesn’t mean for them that business does not come first. It’s a matter of economics. … A lot of my income has been derived from voicing Disney and family programming.”

Stiers also added that the flamboyant nature of some of his animated roles contributed to his decision to hide his sexuality:

“Cogsworth, the character I did on Beauty And The Beast could be a bit flamboyant onscreen, because basically, he is a cartoon. But they didn’t want Cogsworth to become Disney’s gay character, because it got around a gay man was playing him.”

“I wish to spend my life’s twilight being just who I am. I could claim noble reasons as coming out in order to move gay rights forward, but I must admit it is for far more selfish reasons. Now is the time I wish to find someone, and I do not desire to force any potential partner to live a life of extreme discretion with me.”

Stiers had a long career on stage, in television and on film, frequently working in the films of Woody Allen, includung: Shadows And Fog, Mighty Aphrodite, Everybody Says I Love You and Curse Of The Jade Scorpion. But his greatest success has been in the world of voice-over work. It was his voice that earned him his first screen credit: the announcer in George Lucas’ THX 1138 (1971).

Besides Beauty And The Beast (1991), Stiers lent his voice to eight Disney features, appearing in Pocahontas (1995), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), and Lilo & Stitch (2002), the latter as the enjoyably sociopathic mad scientist, Dr. Jumba, who sets off the film’s entire plot. He also voiced a character in the English version of Spirited Away, distributed by Disney.

Ironically, it was the flamboyant nature of some of those roles that he says contributed to his staying closeted.

Stiers ad-libbed the last part of Cogsworth’s famous advice to the Beast on what to give Belle:

 ”Well, there’s the usual things: flowers… chocolates… promises you don’t intend to keep…”

Cogsworth is played by Sir Ian McKellen in the live action remake of Beauty And The Beast, the Number One film of 2017.

Dedicated to his love of classical music, Stiers was the associate musical director for the Newport Oregon Symphony Orchestra and the Ernest Bloch Music Festival. He also guest-conducted over 70 orchestras around the world, including the Oregon Mozart Players, the Vancouver Symphony, the Virginia Symphony, the Oregon Chamber Players, plus orchestras in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto.

Stiers was 75-years-old when he was taken by bladder cancer.

Are you sitting down? It has been 20 years since Madonna‘s seminal album, Ray of Light dropped. In early March, 1998 it debuted with a new sound and her video for Frozen. According to Rolling Stone,

“This was her avant-techno move, with U.K. producer William Orbit. It was her spiritual-awakening statement. But Ray of Light holds up as her most soulful and passionate music ever – a libido-crazed disco-hippie mom pushing 40 and proud of it, flaunting her artiest emotional extremes.”

These songs celebrate her newborn daughter, Lourdes, mourn her long-lost mother and incoprate karma, yoga and her newfound Kabala, even asking people to call her ‘Esther‘ then. She told Billboard at the time,

“I feel like I’ve been enlightened, and that it’s my responsibility to share what I’ve learned so far with the world.“

And share, sometimes to the point of overshare, she has. Madonna’s manager and pal Guy Oseary, just posted a video of them together during an MTV interview at the time with the caption,

“20 year anniversary of @madonna RAY OF LIGHT album… one of the greatest albums of all time… It was the first @Madonna album I worked on..

You can see from this video the kind of relationship we had then… NOTHING has changed.. if you filmed us today, it would be the same dynamic.. Love this woman. Love this album. One day she will hopefully do a tour for this album.. it deserves to be performed from start to finish… respect to @williamorbit for his brilliant work on this album.“

Madonna responded in the comments:

“Can you help me now please!! Remember when I made records with other artists from beginning to end and I was allowed to be a visionary and not have to go to songwriting camps where no one can sit still for more than 15 minutes. She then added five flame emojis and wrote: ‘Coming soon.‘”

OK. But drama or no, however it was birthed (props to William Orbit) ROL is her best-selling studio album of her career. Even her most faithful worshipers, who subscribed to every reinvention, every offering no matter what, weren’t quite prepared for music on this level. But hey, as the world has come to find out, she’s Madonna, bitch.

Listen to it again, from opening line of Drowned World

“I traded fame for love without a second thought…“

to the last chords of Mer Girl,

“…I ran and I ran, I’m still running away.“

20 year anniversary of @madonna RAY OF LIGHT album.. One of the greatest albums of all time.. It was the first @Madonna album I worked on.. You can see from this video the kind of relationship we had then.. NOTHING has changed.. If you filmed us today, it would be the same dynamic.. Love this woman. Love this album. One day she will hopefully do a tour for this album.. It deserves to be performed from start to finish.. respect to @williamorbit for his brilliant work on this album.. .. Also two groundbreaking videos #Frozen by Chris Cunningham and #rayoflight by my dear friend @jonasakerlund .. those were really fun times..

A post shared by Guy Oseary (@guyoseary) on Feb 23, 2018 at 7:54am PST

World of Wonder’s, Fenton Bailey, Tom Campbell, and James St. James‘ top ten countdown on Radio Andy, put ROL at #2 this week. They discussed the album’s effect on them below. It starts at 47:47.

(via Rolling Stone)

More than a showbiz marketing tool, Movie Posters are an artform in themselves, showcasing the work of the greatest illustrators and designers with clever concepts, elegant artwork, and boldly original ideas.

Originally, film posters were produced for the exclusive use by the theaters exhibiting the film the poster was for, and they were required to be returned to the distributor after the film left the theater. In the USA, film posters were usually returned to the National Screen Service (NSS) which printed and distributed most of the film posters for the studios between 1940 and 1984. To save money, the NSS regularly recycled posters that were returned, sending them back out to be used again at another theater. During this era, a film might be shown for several years, so many film posters were badly worn before going into storage at an NSS warehouse, but most often, they were thrown away. Those posters which were not returned were often thrown away by the theater owner, which is why they are so collectible today.

A poster for Frankenstein (1931), the classic horror monster movie from Universal Pictures, starring Colon Clive, Mae Clarke and Boris Karloff, and directed by openly gay James Whale went at auction for $198,000 in 1993, at the time, a record.

Flying Down To Rio (1933), the musical was directed by Thornton Freeland sold for $239,000 in 1995.

King Kong (1933) with Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong, in 1999, the three-sheet film poster was sold for $244,500.

A rare and coveted poster for Metropolis (1927), one of only four known surviving copies from the silent classic, sold at auction in 2012 for $850,000. German painter Heinz Schulz-Neudamm (1899-1969) created the poster for the famed film directed by Fritz Lang (1890-1976). The film is based on the novel of the same name by Thea Von Harbou (1888-1954) about the dystopian future of the year 2000. Metropolis is a masterpiece of early German filmmaking and the forerunner of modern science fiction films.

This one is the international version of the poster (the German version includes the credits).  Distributors in other countries commissioned their own posters to advertise this film, but this is the first use of the robotic woman image that has become the iconic representation of the film.

Some of my favorite film poster artists:

John Henry Alvin (1948 -2008): Blade Runner, The Lion King, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Richard Amsel (1947-1985) Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Sting, Hello, Dolly!

Saul Bass (1920 -1996) Vertigo, The Shining, Love In The Afternoon

Lobby cards are similar to posters but smaller, usually 11 in × 14  or 8 in × 10 in before 1930. Lobby cards are also highly collectible, and values depend on their age, quality, and popularity of the film. Typically issued in sets of eight, each featuring a different scene from the film. The set for The Running Man (1963), has only six cards, but the set for The Italian Job (1969) has twelve. Films released by major production companies experiencing financial difficulties often lacked lobby sets.

A ”teaser poster” or ”advance poster” is an early promotional film poster, containing a basic image or design without revealing too much information such as the plot, theme, and characters. The purpose is to incite awareness and generate hype for the film. A tagline may be included. There are some instances when teaser posters are issued long in advance before the film goes into production. Teasers for cancelled projects very collectible. Teasers sometimes only bearing a symbol associated with the film, or simply just the title.

Today’s posters often feature photographs of the film’s stars. Prior to the 1990s, illustrations were far more common. The text on film posters usually contains the film title in large lettering and often the names of the main actors, a tagline, the name of the director, names of characters, and the release date.

Posters even have the own Academy Awards. The annual Key Art Awards include awards for Best Film Poster in the categories of Comedy, Drama, Action Adventure, Teaser, and Foreign Film.

As you know, each week The Wow Report does a top 10 countdown on Radio Andy and (spoiler alert!) this week they predicted the top 6 oscar category winners. WOW’s, Fenton Bailey, Tom Campbell, James St. James and producer Blake Jakobs all voted for their picks for the 90th annual Academy Award’s Best Supporting Actor & Actress, Best Director, Best Actor & Actress and Best Picture. But as you’ll see here, James disagreed with just about every choice (and for the record, I agree with James in almost every instance.)

We shall see tonight who ends up being right. No matter what, there will be a lot of “I told you so’s” Monday morning at WOW headquarters just a block away from where crews will be taking down those giant gold statues, THAT you can bank on.

Who do you think is going to win, tell us on Facebook.

It starts at 54:27. (As if you don’t already know, if you watch/listen to the show, THIS is what these guys are REALLY like.)

Watch.

Here are the nominees with WOW’s picks in bold.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Octavia Spencer, “The Shape of Water”
Lesley Manville, “Phantom Thread”
Laurie Metcalf, “Lady Bird”
Allison Janney, “I, Tonya”
Mary J. Blige, “Mudbound”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Christopher Plummer, “All the Money in the World”
Woody Harrelson, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Sam Rockwell, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Willem Dafoe, “The Florida Project”
Richard Jenkins, “The Shape of Water”

BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson, “Phantom Thread”
Jordan Peele, “Get Out”
Guillermo Del Toro, “The Shape of Water”
Christopher Nolan, “Dunkirk”
Greta Gerwig, “Lady Bird

BEST ACTOR
Timothée Chalamet, “Call Me by Your Name”
Denzel Washington, “Roman J. Israel, Esq.”
Daniel Day-Lewis, “Phantom Thread”
Gary Oldman, “Darkest Hour”
Daniel Kaluuya, “Get Out”

BEST ACTRESS
Sally Hawkins, “The Shape of Water”
Margot Robbie, “I, Tonya”
Frances McDormand, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Saoirse Ronan, “Lady Bird”
Meryl Streep, “The Post”

BEST PICTURE
“Call Me by Your Name”
“Get Out”
“Lady Bird”
“The Post”
“Phantom Thread”
“Dunkirk”
“The Shape of Water”
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
“Darkest Hour”

Charles Barkley hosted Saturday Night Live last night and one of the first sketches, took on awards shows in the age #MeToo.

Grabbie nominees Tom Sturgeson (Alex Moffat), Lenny Martin (Pete Davidson), Ronald Kellogg (Kenan Thompson) and Tim Franklin (Charles Barkley)

They also switch out the male host two times after each of the hosts was revealed to have his own harassment scandal.

And even a token female Catherine LeBourge played by Aidy Bryant, was up for an award because she

“Bit off an intern’s penis.”

She also shared that her latest job was getting the fish in The Shape of Water horny.

Watch.

Peter Hujar’s “Fran Lebowitz at Home in Morristown, 1974” , from Leslie+Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

Conversation provided at Fran Lebowitz’s skill level would have been celebrated in another era, just look at vintage video clips that show figures like James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, and William F. Buckley on talk shows from the 1960s. Lebowitz has said how she was thrilled and inspired as a young person by one of Baldwin’s appearances on the David Susskind Show. Today’s talk shows are no comparison, with guests that are pre-interviewed and come out to plug their product for five minutes. But, when Lobowitz appears on a talk show, there is actual conversation.

Lebowitz is famously paralyzed with what she calls ”writer’s blockade” but she has few peers as a public pontificator. Her particular gift for gab has made it possible for her to afford to continue to live in NYC and to hang out with her famous friends.

Cranky, sardonic, witty and dry; her essays make me think and they make me laugh. She was named one of the most stylish women in Vanity Fair’s International Best-Dressed List, and she is known for wearing bespoke suits from Savile Row’s Anderson And Sheppard.

Leibowitz disapproves of pretty much everything except sleep, cigarettes, and fine furniture. Her essays about the difficulty of finding an acceptable apartment or the art of freeloading are classics of social observation. I still re-read her first books Social Studies and Metropolitan Life, both published more than 35 years ago.

“Polite conversation is rarely either.”