The great Nathan Lane returns to Working it Out for a chat with Mike Birbiglia. Nathan recounts moments from his legendary career — discussing what it was like to work with Mike Nichols, Elaine May, and Robin Williams. He shares what he likes most in a director, who he’s jealous of, and what he remembers of twenty-something year old Mike. Plus, an incredible story about working with Joaquin Phoenix on the film Beau is Afraid. He also chats lots about his terrific new sitcom Mid-Century Modern and remembers late co-star Linda Lavin who played his mother.
Was invited to a preview screening of Another Simple Favor this week which provided an opportunity to see the movie on the big screen with an audience – the way movies like this should be seen.
It premiered on Amazon Prime Video today and I highly recommend this at times very funny film which features a hilarious performance by the great Allison Janney as Aunt Linda McLinden that I did not expect and loved! The character is not in the first movie and is a delicious addition. Janney is a hoot and her ultimate fate is something I am still laughing about days later!
Drag star Rhea Litré was our host for the evening and we posed for pics with her outside before she introduced with movie with great flair.
Here’s the basic plot: Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) reunite on the island of Capri, Italy, for Emily’s extravagant wedding to a rich Italian businessman, which is interrupted by murder and betrayal. Directed by Paul Feig and written by Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis. It is a sequel to A Simple Favor (2018) with Kendrick, Lively, Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Joshua Satine, and Ian Ho reprise their roles from the first film, with Michele Morrone, Elena Sofia Ricci, Elizabeth Perkins, Alex Newell, and Allison Janney joining the cast.
I had seen the original movie and enjoyed it but frankly didn’t remember some of the details. But it didn’t deter from my enjoyment of this sequel which played more broad, funny and outrageous than the first movie. There are plenty of twists and turns and Lively is as good and glamorous as you would expect in a role that gets far more complicated this time around. But Kendrick is the real gem in the sequel as her character remains calm no matter what is happening around her and to her.
Love that there’s a few queer plot twists and turns and that the cast prominently features queer performers including Newell and Rannells. Perkins makes the role played by Jean Smart in the first movie all her own.
Wanda Sykes discusses the final season of her show “The Upshaws,” what she is looking forward to from her “Please & Thank You” tour and her efforts to bring the WNBA to Philadelphia.
Dreamboat television and film actor Perry King is was a real heartthrob in the 80s when he was one of the stars of NBC’s Riptide.
Today Is his 77th birthday!
Perry made his film debut in the 1972 feature Slaughterhouse Five but lost out on the role of Hans Solo in Star Wars three years later to Harrison Ford.
His other feature credits included The Lords of Flatbush with Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler, Lipstick with Margaux Hemingway and a very controversial movie for its time: A Different Story which cast him as a gay man best friends with a lesbian played by Meg Foster.
He made scores of TV movies including Inmates: A Love Story opposite Kate Jackson; The Hasty Heart for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and the highly-rated miniseries I’ll Take Manhattan.
Post-Riptide, he had a recurring role on Melrose Place and played a patriarch of a very rich and very dysfunctional family in the NBC primetime soap Titans which also starred Victoria Principal, John Barrowman and Yasmine Bleeth, among others.
His most recent TV credits include guest spots on Big Love, The Mentalist and Drop Dead Diva.
Chris Meloni joins Drew Barrymore to talk about his role in “Law & Order”, what it’s like being called the internet’s “Zaddy”, the inspiration behind his “Wet Hot American Summer” character, and so much more.
I remember going to see Phantom Thread in 2017 and thoroughly loving it and Daniel Day-Lewis’ Oscar-nominated performance. But I walked out of the Vista Theatre in Silver Lake that day feeling a bit sad because Day-Lewis had already announced he was retiring from movies.
But the actor, who turns 68 today, will be returning to the big screen after an eight-year hiatus in Anemone, a film that marks the directorial debut of his son, Ronan Day-Lewis.
This was not the great actor’s first break from movies. Following his performance in The Boxer in 1997, he retired from acting for three years and took up a new profession as an apprentice shoe-maker in Italy. He returned to acting in 2000.
His body of work is not plentiful, but it is just extraordinary. He is the first and so far only male actor to have won three Academy Awards for Best Actor (My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood, and Lincoln) and also earned nominations for In the Name of the Father, Gangs of New York, and Phantom Thread.
He first earned acclaim for his breakthrough performances in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), A Room with a View (1985), and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). His other films included The Last of the Mohicans, The Age of Innocence, The Crucible, The Ballad of Jack and Rose and Nine.
After supporting roles in Ghandi and The Bounty, he gave his first critically acclaimed performance playing a young gay English man in an interracial relationship with a Pakistani youth in the film My Beautiful Laundrette. I remember renting it on VHS and watching it three times before having to return it to the video store the next day.
So many good movies followed includingThe Last of the Mohicans, The Age of Innocence, The Crucible, The Boxer, The Ballad of Jack and Rose directed by his wife, Rebecca Miller, and the film adaptation. of the musical Nine.
I’ve seen all his films and if he makes any in the future, I’ll watch those too.
Came across this clip randomly on YouTube and it is very FUNNY! The comic, Will Burkart, isn’t gay which makes his banter with two gay friends in the audience all the funnier. Enjoy!
Emmy-winning comedian Wanda Sykes weighs in on the “embarrassing, incompetent, corrupt” Trump administration and offers tips for folks who want to hit the streets and protest the president’s policies.
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Was invited to a preview screening of Another Simple Favor this week which provided an opportunity to see the movie on the big screen with an audience – the way movies like this should be seen. 
Dreamboat television and film actor Perry King is was a real heartthrob in the 80s when he was one of the stars of NBC’s Riptide.
