out and about
Added: March 25, 2008, 9:00 pm	Share    Print    Email

It looks like it will be "lights, camera, action!" all over Southampton in the coming weeks. I just learned from a casting agent pal of mine that Oscar winning director Mike Nichols has been quietly seeing actors in New York for a new feature film slated to be shot in our neck of the woods. The movie is titled "Breadcrumbs" and will feature a cast of teens and 20-somethings. Not too much on the details of the script, but I can tell you that two of the leads play former porn stars trying to come to grips with life. No matter what, as history has shown, no one can handle complex human relationship stories like Mike, who is hotter than ever following the tremendous reception of his most recent hit "Charlie Wilson's War."

Just to remind you, the multi-talented director/producer/writer/actor and all-round good guy has entertained us with such groundbreaking films as "The Graduate" with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, "Silkwood" with Meryl Streep and Cher, "Heartburn" with Jack Nicholson and again Meryl Streep, "Working Girl" with Melanie Griffith and Sigorney Weaver, "Carnal Knowledge" with Candice Bergen and again Jack Nicholson, "Catch 22" with Alan Arkin and Art Garfunkel, "Primary Colors" with John Travolta and Emma Thompson, and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" with the legendary team of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. As well, he's directed too many stars to name who received Oscar nods for their work with him. That's quite a track record. Mike, honey, I'm ready for my close-up anytime!

Diane Von Furstenberg and Mike Nichols. Photo by PatrickMcMullan.com

Also coming to Southampton - and a cause for more cheering - is the dee-vine designer Jackie Rogers, who's setting up shop at 50 Jobs Lane, the former home to Rags. Jackie, who loves to tell people "I don't believe in fashion, I believe in style," has always stood apart from the flock as a style innovator who plays hard with the classics, giving them her own super luxe touches. No wonder her client list reads like a Who's Who of singular women. Jackie Kennedy Onassis was a longtime wearer of Rogers' clothing, as her sister, Lee Radziwill, still is. Other clients include Angelica Huston, Diana Ross, Pia Lindstrom, and Ashley Judd.

Jackie is as individual and elegant as her clothes and no surprise, given her background. Her career has run the gamut from big-band singer, Hollywood starlet, denizen of Rome's La Dolce Vita in the company of princes and playboys, films for Fellini, Chanel's favored mannequin, successful New York model, and finally, owner of an innovative Madison Avenue barbershop boutique that set that staid street of shops on its collective ear and transformed the concept of boutiques forever. Jackie has great personal style and even more to the point, a unique ability to transfer that style to her clients. Welcome!

More movie buzz: Friends say Sarah Jessica Parker is not very confident that her as-yet-to-be-released movie, "Spinning Into Butter," will ever make it into theaters. In the film, co-starring Miranda Richardson and Beau Bridges, Sarah plays the dean of a New England college dealing with a hate crime on the campus that forces her into a position where she has to examine her own feelings about race and prejudice, while maintaining her administration's politically correct policies. Can't blame her for being disappointed, Sarah has a nice, seriously meaty, part - a jump from her fun-loving trend-setting "Sex and the City" role that I absolutely love, love, love.

'Tis the season for awards - I've already told you about the buzz on the upcoming Fred & Adele Astaire Awards, which will honor long tall Texan Tommy Tune and Broadway and film's hottest dancers. Now comes word that our favorite husband and wife producing team, Bonnie Comley and Stewart Lane, will receive the Actors Fund Medal of Honor at their May 5 gala celebrating the Fund's 125th Anniversary. Another East Ender, Alec Baldwin, will go home that night with the Actors Fund Nedda Harrigan Logan Award, and opera diva, the incomparable Renee Fleming, will receive the Lee Strasberg Artistic Achievement Award at the black tie fete at Cipriani 42nd Street. (If only I can find the perfect gown for that occasion).

Shelter Island's Simon Doonan of Barney's and books fame will see his life story - warts and all - unfold on the screen in wild and wacky (he hopes) sitcom style. The BBC series, helmed by Jon Plowman of "The Office" and "Absolutely Fabulous" fame, is titled "Beautiful People" and diminutive Simon (he's just 5-foot 4 ½ inches tall) is hoping the producers will get creative with the casting, like they did in casting Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan. Simon very seriously is suggesting fellow Brit Linda Hunt, who won an Oscar as the male Chinese-Australian dwarf in "The Year of Living Dangerously." The series is based on his off-the-wall memoir "Nasty: My Family and Other Varmints," which recounts his life growing up in a working class village in England.

Meanwhile, his upcoming book, "Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You," is coming out in April and of course I was able to wangle an advance copy of the book from the man who coined the term "wacky chicks" for such style goddesses as Diana Vreeland and Audrey Smaltz. In typical Doonan fashion, it is over the top and just veering to the saucily nasty. Doonan interviews the insanely fabulous and the fabulously insane - everyone from Dita Von Teese to Tilda Swinton to Malcolm Gladwell - about their unique personal styles. The book is "intended as a wake-up call to the women of America to eschew the contemporary porno-chic trend and inject a little classy eccentricity into their fashion choices," says Simon. In his inimitable style, he asks actors, models and fashion experts such burning questions as where they want to be buried and in what. But I've already told too much - get a copy for a delightful spear thrown at the world of faux fashion.

Hot on the heels of my telling you about Steve Schwarzman's $100 million donation for the New York Public Library comes the news that the Whitney Museum has their own sugar daddy - Leonard A. Lauder. Lauder, the chairman of Estée Lauder cosmetics, will be donating $131 million through his American Contemporary Art Foundation, the largest donation the museum has received in 77 years, and one of the largest ever to a New York museum's endowment. One string is attached to the gift, however - the museum cannot sell its Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, at least not for an unspecified extended period of time. It had been widely gossiped they would be selling it in order to open a satellite museum downtown - but not now.

Here's another little tidbit for your "big money changing hands" file. One of Southampton's favorite couples, George and Carol McFadden, just sold their sprawling Southampton mansion on exclusive Lake Agawam for a reputed $25 million. George is the general partner in the McFadden Brothers investment company and the brother of fashion designer Mary McFadden.

The vintage 11,000-square-foot home designed by Grosvenor Atterbury on more than three acres includes 11 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, numerous fireplaces and a large porch overlooking the lake. Also featured on the property on First Neck Lane are a heated pool, a winding driveway, lush landscaped grounds, and specimen trees. Neighbors on the lake include WNBC anchor Chuck Scarborough.

Three of New York's biggest moguls are competing to buy Newsday from the Tribune Company. The three interested bidders are Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation and owner of The New York Post, Mort Zuckerman as in the real estate developer and publisher who owns The Daily News (The Post's rival of course), and James Dolan whose family controls little old Cablevision and Madison Square Garden.

The company, which has been controlled by billionaire Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell since the end of last year, reported a loss of $78.8 million for the fourth quarter, compared with a $239 million profit in the year-earlier quarter. For the full year, it reported a profit of $86.9 million, down from $594 million. That's some drop. No wonder the editorial rooms at the paper have been decimated to a skeleton staff.

I hate to hear about any paper in trouble, so let's shift gears and talk fashion - yeah! A Who's Who of fashion, including Tommy Hilfiger, Isaac Mizrahi, and Carolina Herrera, gathered at Rockefeller Center to hear Diane Von Furstenberg announce this year's CFDA Award nominees. Von Furstenberg also announced the ceremony would have an unexpected host: her great friend, writer Fran Lebowitz.

Marc Jacobs, Francisco Costa of Calvin Klein, and Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough of Proenza Schouler, have been nominated for the women's wear award. While they are all great, only my fellas Jack and Lazaro really delivered the goods this season and Calvin really doesn't send my heart racing.

Far more interesting are the men's wear designers - Michael Bastian from Bill Blass, Tom Ford, and Thom Browne. Bastian had to create Bill Blass men's wear more or less from scratch and yet managed to find a look both chic and appealing to American men. The Thom Browne look - shrunken suits that show the ankles - is setting fashion trends, but not likely to appeal to the majority of even the most fashion-conscious men. My money is on Tom Ford, who continues to be one of the best at building a brand and everything that entails, from shop design to advertising.

Dries Van Noten will receive the International Award. Carolina Herrera will receive the much deserved Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will receive the Board of Director's Special Tribute. Candy Pratts Price of Style.com will receive the Eugenia Sheppard Award. The 2008 CFDA Fashion Awards will take place June 2 at the New York Public Library in a theater-style setup, followed by a dinner at the nearby Bryant Park Grill. Swarovski is underwriting the event for the seventh year.

From the world of high fashion, I'm making the jump to disco dish. My favorite dance partner when I hit the New York clubs is Randy Jones, a/k/a The Cowboy of "Village People" fame, as in "Macho Man," "YMCA," etc. Randy, who "Can't Stop the Music," has a new album out that is belying the idea that disco is dead. The critics from Billboard to the fusty New York Times are raving about his latest release, "Ticket to the World" and its opening single, "Your Disco Needs You." Too bad the Parrish couldn't have nabbed him for their Spring Fling Disco Fever blast. That crowd would have loved him!