Brooklyn-born, Brooklyn-educated Lee Israel once wrote biographies of bye-byes like Tallulah Bankhead, Lillian Hellman, Noël Coward. Later, when broke and scrambling, she turned forger and felon. Leaving us physically in 2014, she’s now here cinematically.
Fox Searchlight and producer Anne Carey star Melissa McCarthy in Lee’s life story “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
The film’s midwife is Hollywood producer/director David Yarnell, whose 28-day NYC shoot took 11 years to happen. He optioned her autobio 20 years ago. She then had writer’s block. Vanity Fair passed. New Yorker said, “Uh-uh.” Finally, one 3 a.m. Scotch boozer Lee phoned David asking “So where’s my f - - kin’ book deal?”
Simon & Schuster ultimately published it. A provision being “Yarnell be part of the deal,” and he’s so acknowledged in the book. David understood her $10 vocabulary, her tough, rough, off-putting personality. She had a dirty West Side walk-up. She liked nobody. Her brother didn’t even like her. I knew her, so I know this story.
The movie idea fell apart. Tanked projects often stay tanked, but Yarnell kept it alive. Finally it was a go. He picked Julianne Moore to star. Maybe artistic differences. Maybe too beautiful for the role. She exited. So did the film.
Enter Melissa McCarthy, who never questioned direction, never bitched or complained.
She didn’t mind that its slim budget provided no private room. And she certainly isn’t complaining that her performance is already garnering Oscar talk. Scammer Israel’s story drew raves at Telluride and Toronto film festivals.
And next maybe we’ll get a movie of how Native Americans beat their drums to tell the saga of Spitting Bull Elizabeth Warren.
Juicy theater tidbits
This weekend Mercedes Ruehl, who plays “Torch Song’s” steely matriarch, hosted a margarita/tequila shots boozathon after the show. Harvey Fierstein dished backstage, everyone toasted everyone, Barry Manilow cuddled with Michael Urie’s dog President McKinley, and nobody — including McKinley — needed their wee-wee pad before 1 a.m.
More Broadway. Coming is musical comedy “Beetlejuice” from Tim Burton’s wonderfully demented film about ghosts scaring and possessing people into performing “The Banana Boat Song.” Listen, we’re not talking Shakespeare here.
Curtain time, at its tryout in DC’s National Theatre, Alex Brightman, who plays Beetlejuice, invited Lord Burgess, 94, co-writer of the lyrics to “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” to come up and together they sang his song. Listen, we’re not talking Beethoven here.
Everyone has a team these days
Everybody kvetches politics have changed. Actors, too.
Established names like Kidman and Clooney know their jobs. Smile, pose, glad-hand, chat with the press.
Today teens in car-crash flicks say “Talk to my team.” What “team”?
The guy accompanying one blonde wore an earring, a mohawk, a tattoo and his crotch, lower than his IQ, swept the floor. If he had any outstanding part, it wasn’t visible. And he was her “team”?
New book. “Guest Who’s Sleeping in My Bed?”
Subtitle: “When People Don’t Want To Stay at a Hotel They Sleep With Me . . .”
Author’s Kitty Logic, a smartass cat whose mother, Vivian Lee Paxton, runs a B&B and writes shtick like: “Fourteen pancakes aren’t enough for Germans nor can my bed accommodate their love for schnitzel” . . . and “One roll of toilet paper for two should last two days. Wrong. So I left a plastic mouse in their bed by accident” . . . and “I’ve developed supersonic ears. Hearing the morning’s first toilet flush, I know it’s showtime. High heels, slap on the hairpiece and serve breakfast with a smile.”
She even writes about “a hippie bitch” overnighter.
Hey, it’s only in New York, kids, only in New York.