Presenting Obama, the musical

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 2 Comments

In July 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech before an adoring crowd of 200,000 Germans in Berlin. Democrats hailed the performance as JFK-esque, while Republicans accused the then-presidential candidate of being little more than a grandstanding celebrity. But even Democratic partisans are likely to cringe at the notion of a fawning new German musical called Hope!, based on Obama’s presidential campaign, which premieres in Frankfurt on Jan. 17.

Written and conceived by the American composer Randall Hutchins, Hope! is a big-budget production with 30 cast members playing key figures in the election campaign—both Democrat and Republican—as well as citizens caught up in the excitement, including what the official website describes as “an Afro-American committed non-voter” and “a humorous Italo-American restaurant owner.”

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Team Elin

By Nancy Macdonald - Monday, January 11, 2010 at 11:36 AM - 11 Comments

Not long ago, Sweden served as the ideal retreat for the famously reclusive Tiger Woods. There, the planet’s most transcendent athlete could escape the paparazzi’s constant gaze and enjoy snowy, low-key holidays in Parlstrom, at the family home of Elin Nordegren, his Swedish-born wife. He could stroll through tiny Vaxholm or Stockholm’s leafy, central Karlaplan plaza without raising so much as a blond eyebrow.

But since the world’s No. 1 golfer drove his Cadillac Escalade into a tree on Nov. 27 and his sexcapades became the biggest story of 2009, the golf-mad Swedes have unleashed a torrent of public support for his wronged wife, lashing out at Woods in the process. “ ‘Transgressions,’ ‘infidelity’ and ‘hiatus’ are not good enough,” wrote Lasse Anrell, a star columnist with Aftonbladet, the country’s biggest newspaper. Tiger, he says, should at least be man enough to admit to what he did. “Here’s a word that he should add to his vocabulary: ‘sex addict.’ That’s S-E-X-­A-D-D-I-C-T, Tiger.” Meanwhile, Ann Söderlund, a leading Aftonbladet journalist, commended Nordegren’s “Swedish” reaction. “While Hillary and Posh Spice chose to keep silent, diet and become feminist doormats, Elin stood with both feet firmly planted on the ground and realized the shame was Tiger’s, not hers. Thank God for girls like Elin. Next time, I hope she uses a bigger club.”

In fact, Nordegren (who allegedly took a three-iron to her philandering husband) is being celebrated as a kind of modern folk hero. “Swing it again, Elin!” wrote Aftonbladet’s editor-in-chief Jan Helin on his blog. Yes, Woods, the planet’s blandest superstar, has inspired the progressive, famously peaceful nation to advocate for retributive justice.

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Sweden, of course, remains a safe haven for Nordegren. In fact, she is believed to have retreated there over the holidays with the couple’s two children, two-year-old Sam and 10-month-old Charlie. And recently, she bought a US$2.2-million, six-bedroom hideaway on small, secluded Faglaro Island, a 45-minute ferry ride from Vaxholm, where she grew up.

Yet more than “she’s our gal” patriotic loyalty is driving Swedish support, columnist Britta Svensson told Maclean’s. Nordegren, after all, is no regular Swede; rather, her “well-known, upper-middle-class family” makes this “personal,” she says. Nordegren’s mother Barbro Holmberg, a former cabinet minister and current governor of Gävleborg county, made the front page of the country’s biggest papers, Expressen, Aftonbladet, and Dagens Nyheter, after being hospitalized in Florida with stomach pains in the early days of the scandal. And Elin’s globe-trotting journalist father, Thomas Nordegren, has been thrust into an even brighter spotlight than usual. “I do, of course, have an opinion about both the Internet gossip and media’s treatment [of the unfolding drama],” Thomas recently told his radio audience. “But my biggest task is to support my daughter and my grandchildren. To bring that up in my own program would be inappropriate. Enough about this!” Most of the Swedish media has politely respected the parents’ privacy.

But with their very own flaxen-haired party in the drama, Swedes are lapping up every juicy new detail of the golfer’s sordid affairs. Woods’s marital saga has been splashed on the front pages of the country’s papers for weeks, with some media outlets dispatching reporters to Florida to cover this most un-Swedish circus. The normally reserved country—wholly unused to the media digging into the private lives of its public figures—is gorging on its first real taste of paparazzi scrutiny, says Michael Winiarski, a U.S.-based correspondent with Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest morning paper. “Hour after hour,” he described in a recent report, “relationship experts, finger-waggers, weepers and D-list celebrities” were trotted out on network TV to comment on the latest, tawdry revelation.

Still, Swedes perceive celebrity, pop culture and gender entirely differently than the U.S., and some see this as an opportunity to punctuate that. Sweden’s “obsessively egalitarian” culture ensures that girls have a strong sense of self, experts explain (this is, after all, the country that in the ’40s gave us girl rebel Pippi Longstocking, who lived alone, sailed the seven seas, drank lemonade from the jug, and could outlift any man). “Swedish women like Elin are brought up to be independent and strong,” Aftonbladet editor Karin Magnusson explains. “We’re excited about this. We’re hoping Elin will file for divorce, and show Tiger—and the world—what Swedish women stand for.”

The country’s famed, cradle-to-grave welfare state, which offsets women’s unpaid work with state-funded child care and eldercare services, includes a state-paid allowance for 60 days of pappamanader—“daddy’s months”—to allow father and newborn to properly bond. And the gap in the employment rates between men and women in Sweden is half of what it is in the U.S. Swedes pride themselves on having created a more egalitarian culture, not just between rich and poor, but between men and women. “Our Swedish hearts are overwhelmed with pride, because our very own Elin didn’t take any s–t. Just like a tough Swedish girl shouldn’t,” Svensson wrote. “Elin is our heroine.”

Still, few believe Nordegren will take her young children to live in Sweden, away from their dad. Tradition dictates that child custody be shared, says Svensson (in Sweden, single-parent custody is “very rare,” she adds, generally granted only in cases of “incest or severe domestic abuse”). When a Swedish couple divorces, assets are typically halved, 50-50—“pre-nups and divorce lawyers are almost unheard of,” writes Swedish journalist Katarina Andersson. In fact, most Swedes were revolted by news that Woods had reportedly sweetened the pre-nup, offering Nordegren US$55 million more to stay for two more years, says Svensson: “We think a woman who marries for money is stupid—behaviour we connect with a typical American gold-digging housewife.” And Nordegren, poised, substantive, elegant, and born of an intelligent, well-to-do family, is, she insists, nothing of the sort.

What Nordegren has planned next is anybody’s guess. But while she has remained silent, some have picked up on signals—as when she was photographed pumping gas without her wedding ring. Though she was reportedly in talks with a top L.A. divorce lawyer before Christmas, it remains unclear whether she will “take the money, and kick him in the butt,” as per the suggestion of fellow Swede, Anna Anka, whose tumultuous marriage to Paul Anka has also captivated the country. If Nordegren does give Woods the boot—which several U.S. media reports she intends to—those supportive Swedes might make it a national holiday.

Aniston 1 Paparazzi 0

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 2:17 PM - 1 Comment

Paparazzi are known to go to extreme lengths for the “big shot.” But after hearing of celebrity horror stories from Jennifer Aniston and others, California politicians created a new law to crack down on the photographers. And Aniston is getting all the credit. The new legislation allows for penalties of up to $50,000 against photographers and media outlets that buy “unlawfully obtained” photos and video that violates privacy laws by showing people “engaging in a personal or familial activity” where they have “a reasonable expectation of privacy” such as private property. As for Aniston, she calls it a public safety issue: “When you have children in the car and the photographers are rushing you, it’s just absolutely out of control. Somebody’s going to die if we don’t do something.”

Los Angeles Times

Newsmaker of the Year '09: Lost boy, forever

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 3:19 PM - 0 Comments

Even more startling than the news of his death was its impact. Not since Diana has a celebrity’s sudden passing sent such a profound and lasting shock wave around the world. Michael Jackson’s career had been in the doldrums for over a decade, his reputation shattered by allegations of child molestation, his face ravaged by cosmetic surgery, his body wired on painkillers, his finances in shreds. Although his fans had remained fiercely loyal, snapping up tickets for a sold-out comeback tour that would never take place, for much of the world the King of Pop had become a sad freak—a literally pale shadow of the man-child who once moonwalked into our hearts. But after Jackson’s death on June 25, 2009, a miraculous resurrection began to take place.

As the media became consumed with conjuring his memory, parsing his significance and exploring the riddle of his death, it soon became clear that this celebrity death was shaping up to be an event on a par with the loss of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. In death, the moral scales were instantly tipped. Jackson’s iconic stature would trump his human frailties. The man once accused of being a pedophile and a predator was now cast as victim, possibly a victim of murder by lethal injection, perhaps even the target of a conspiracy. The disturbing pathology of Jackson’s personality—the enigma of the lost boy trapped in a man’s body—only enriched the myth. As a showbiz prodigy forever trying to reclaim the Neverland of his stolen childhood, he acquired tragic nobility. Like Elvis, Marilyn and Diana, here was another martyr to celebrity. Jackson had always dressed as if auditioning for divinity. And in the months that followed, pieces of him would be auctioned off like religious relics, from his diamond-encrusted socks to the white glove he wore in the 1983 Motown TV special—which is considered the “holy grail” of MJ memorabilia.

As a black man who seemed bent on erasing his race and blurring his gender, Jackson’s shape-shifting was mocked when he was alive. In death it only magnified his cultural importance. Just as Elvis Presley and Mick Jagger had plundered the moves and music of black R & B to create their burlesque empires of rock ’n’ roll, Jackson merged black music with white pop, but from the other side. He seemed intent on transforming himself into an alien creature, as if the only ethnicity that really mattered to him was extraterrestrial. With Thriller, the monster video that broke racial barriers and virtually invented MTV, he tried on a ghoulish identity that would follow him to the grave.

Jackson always fancied himself a movie star, or rather a movie character. And he received some posthumous poetic justice with the release of This Is It, the movie stitched together from rehearsal footage of the concert that never was. The film, which has grossed more than US$200 million, puts a lie to all the media speculation that his heart wasn’t in the tour, or that he no longer had the chops to pull it off. His ethereal falsetto was still intact, and his quicksilver dance moves still dazzled, as if he had no choice: the music flowed through his body like an electric current, animating every move with semaphore precision.

Had he lived to perform the tour, no doubt there would have been a concert movie, but it would have shown a slicker performer. The rehearsal footage reveals a softer, more circumspect Michael Jackson. Though the film is more hagiography than documentary, it offers a glimmer of vulnerability, and of the creative soul behind the Oz-like armour of the persona. Jackson comes across as an adult, quietly focused and firmly in command. The movie lends credence to what Elizabeth Taylor once told Oprah Winfrey, that Jackson was “highly intelligent, shrewd, intuitive.” There’s a lovely scene in which Jackson is trying to hold himself back. “Don’t make me sing out,” he pleads. “I gotta save my voice.” It’s a moment freighted with sad irony in a movie that redeems a monstrous icon by reminding us that he was only an artist.

Alicia Keys and the barber's daughter

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 1 Comment

Gisèle Theriault’s life reads like a fairy tale: a barber’s daughter from Cape Breton takes a talismanic necklace of gold and rubies to a glittering ball attended by superstars and a former U.S. president. There’s even a fairy godmother—Alicia Keys. Theriault was operating a modest solo business out of her Toronto home, handcrafting silver jewellery engraved with inspirational messages, when she met Keys backstage at a concert last year. The pop diva took the jeweller under her wing, and since then Oprah Winfrey has been wearing her work. Theriault now has five employees and shares a New York publicist with Keys and the late Michael Jackson. This month Keys launched an enterprise called AK Worldwide, making her protege’s jewellery line its pilot project. And last week at the Black Ball—a star-studded Manhattan gala to raise money for children with AIDS—Theriault saw a necklace that she created auctioned off for US$40,000. She had hoped it would go for more, but had a big consolation. The buyer was Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry.

A few days before the Black Ball, Theriault sat in the sun-splashed kitchen of her home—a three-storey semi that doubles as the headquarters for her company, the Barber’s Daughter—and served a slice of vegan pumpkin pie and flowering tea. As a jasmine bloom opened like a sea anemone in a glass teapot, she confessed that, after working until 4:30 a.m. to finish the necklace for the ball, she had a dream that it sold for $100,000. “I govern myself by dreams,” she says, and her subconscious appraisal wasn’t so far-fetched. For last year’s Black Ball, she made a silver necklace that sold for US$25,000. This one is far more lavish, and made of 18-karat gold. Continue…

What the gossip columnist saw

By Rebecca Eckler - Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 3 Comments

During the 90 minutes I spend with Shinan Govani, Canada’s most celebrated gossip columnist, Victoria Beckham is being touted as the new Paula Abdul on American Idol, rumours are swirling about a pregnant Halle Berry, and Matthew Broderick and Molly Ringwald have spoken about John Hughes’s death. One sentence into this piece and I’ve managed to name-drop six celebrities. But I can’t hold a candle to Govani, whose first novel, Bold Face Names, is being released this month. By page 10, Govani has dropped the names of 66 famous people or star-studded events, including Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Jimmy Choo, Susan Boyle, Suri Cruise and even David Frum.

“How many names do you think you mentioned in the book?” I ask. “I haven’t counted,” he laughs. Govani’s main character is a gossip columnist named Ravi. “His trade is to drop names. To make it as absurd as possible, whenever he has the opportunity to drop names, he will.” Some names are real, some aren’t. “There are real people with their real names,” Govani explains. “There are real people with false names and there are just made-up people.” Continue…

Uncle Walter: not so sadly missed

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 125 Comments

On the face of it—and on the face of them—Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite would not appear to have much in common. Cronkite was (all together now) “the most trusted man in America”; Jackson was the least trusted child-man in America, at least to any parents whose ambitions for their kid extend beyond a $30-million out-of-court settlement. But, for those members of the Jackstream Media hoping to eke out one more week of prostrations and ululations for their Gloved One, Cronkite’s death served as a kind of intervention. For, if there’s one thing the press love more than a celebrity cut down in his prime(ish), it’s the opportunity for self-validation that the passing of one of its own affords. The media’s sense of proportion is never more out of whack than when bidding farewell to some iconic figure from its glory days, and one had high hopes that the eulogies for Cronkite might surpass the impressive new records in risibility set by the coverage of Washington Post doyenne Kay Graham in 2001: “The Most Powerful Woman In America,” “The Most Powerful Woman In The World,” “America’s Queen,” “Kay’s Amazing Grace,” “Oh, Kay,” “Special Kay”. . .

No “Kay. Why?” oddly enough. There was an element of triumphalism in all this: Mrs. Graham was a central figure in what the J-school bores regard as American journalism’s finest hour—Watergate. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive! A mere eight years has passed since Kay Graham’s death, but the smug complacency that characterized her eulogies was noticeably absent from Cronkite’s, which mostly read like obituaries for an industry. It’s sunset, and it’s no longer bliss: the heir to Cronkite, Katie Couric, is the champion limbo dancer of evening-news ratings; the New York Times, the oracle from which all three network newscasts take their cue, is now junk stock. It turns out Walter Cronkite and Michael Jackson have quite a bit in common: both performers peaked circa 1980, and did very little these last two decades. In that sense, they belong culturally to the same generation. They represent the zenith of a shared, universal popular culture: Jacko’s Thriller was the biggest-selling album of all time ever; Cronko’s newscast was the most-watched in America. Barring dramatic and severe government control of technology, no CD and no news show will ever be that big again. And, when you think about it, millions of teenagers going out and buying the same slickly manipulative pop record is less weird than millions of grown-ups agreeing they’ll all get their world view from the same source. But (all together now, again) “that’s the way it was” back in the days when ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post functioned as a co-operative monopoly. Continue…

Mel Gibson’s red carpet PDA

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 12:27 PM - 0 Comments

Mel Gibson used last night’s premiere of X -Men Origins: Wolverine in Los Angeles to premiere his new girlfriend, 39-year old Russian singer Oksana Grigorieva. The 53-year-old actor, who’s in the midst of a divorce from his wife of 28 years with whom he has seven children, has been linked to four different women named Oksana since his divorce was announced two weeks ago. At that time, the actor asked for privacy, a request at decided odds with showing up on the red carpet holding hands with a woman who is rumoured to be pregnant with his child. Then again, the actor, a devout, conservative Roman Catholic, is known for his erratic behaviour. He is also one of Hollywood’s richest stars: with a net worth rumored to be some US$900 million, Gibson’s divorce is expected to be one of Hollywood’s most expensive.

The Times

These fiscally prudent celebs are killing us!

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 4 Comments

We knew this recession thing was bad, but we didn’t know how bad until news came in from the forests of Bavaria that Nicolas Cage had been forced for financial reasons to sell his 28-room German castle, Neidstein. Et tu, economy?

While it’s true that Cage still owns several other homes and could, in a pinch, build a spacious bungalow from remaindered DVDs of Bangkok Dangerous, the fact remains that this big-time celebrity is now in possession of only one (1) ornate castle—Midford, an 18th-century fortress in England.

This is tragic news and I’m sure you’re tempted to feel sorry for Cage. We all know what it feels like to be down to our last castle.

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Lily Allen and Perez Hilton in spat

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 1 Comment

Having already gone head to head with Elton John, Cheryl Cole and Katy Perry, Lily Allen is now embroiled in a slurring match with celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. The singer told the blogger that he was a “parasite” and a “bitter, lonely old queen” after he encouraged his fans to campaign for Allen to put him in her next music video. The spat, which played out on Twitter, had Hilton delivering his own caustic replies and parodying the lyrics from Allen’s new song “It’s Not Fair.”

Times Online

So That's Why The Olsen Twins Are So Thin

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 13, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Mary-Kate Olsen, also known as the Olsen Twin who can act, tells Interview magazine that she and her sister Ashley were taught to act by being forced to reach for small pieces of candy: “We would get little gummy bears—like a gummy bear cut into three pieces. And we’d crawl to the gummy bear or reach for it.”  She also reveals that she recently woke up and found Ashley watching Full House reruns at seven in the morning. Maybe she’s starting to suspect that they got their best roles at the age of one.

Interview magazine