Brando's 'Trip' | Miramax Changes | 'Fahrenheit' Hot | Hamptons Reality | Malibu Moguls
Brando: No Funeral, No Memorial Service and No Widow
Marlon Brando will not be getting the kind of treatment recently accorded Ronald Reagan, Ray Charles and even Tony Randall.
Brando's older sister, Jocelyn, tells me that there will be no funeral for her beloved brother.
"There will be no service of any kind," Jocelyn, 84, told me last night.
Marlon was the youngest of three children. A middle sister, Frances, died a decade ago.
Jocelyn, who had her own busy acting career in the 1950s and '60s, told me: "If someone wants to do something, that's their business. But Marlon would have hated it. He would not have liked it, and we don't want to do anything he didn't want to do. He's off on his trip, whatever that is."
Jocelyn told me she visited with her brother at UCLA Medical Center on Thursday before he passed away.
His death, she said, "was a big surprise to everyone. He'd been on oxygen for about a year. He had pulmonary fibrosis. He went in to get a couple of things looked at, and he just took off."
Brando had three legal wives that are known of and possibly eight biological children, depending on who you believe. Jocelyn said she had been very friendly with the third wife, Tarita Teriipaia, and her nephews Christian and Miko, and her late niece Cheyenne.
"Otherwise, he [Brando] kept everything separate," she explained.
The portly, eccentric and larger-than-life star leaves no widow, his sister said. Brando, Jocelyn said, "lived his life the way he wanted to. It wasn't easy to be him."
Contrary to published reports today, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein isn't going anywhere.
I'm told that despite the inflammatory situation existing between Disney and Miramax on a number of subjects, the two sides are actually talking.
"They're in negotiations," says a source. That's always a good thing.
There are four scenarios that could play out between Weinstein (and his brother Bob) and Disney.
The first is that the Weinsteins could conceivably buy the entire company back from Disney with help from Wall Street.
The second — which I think more likely — is that they buy the name and take all their current projects, leaving the Miramax library of hit movies such as "The English Patient," "Chicago" and "Shakespeare in Love" to be subsumed into the Disney catalogue.
A third scenario could see Harvey Weinstein leaving the company sometime this summer or fall to start his own venture, with brother Bob following next year.
Of course, a fourth scenario is that the Weinsteins simply leave Miramax, the name, the library and all current projects. In that case, Wall Street investors would probably help them start a new film company almost instantly.
The real quandary here is why Disney stockholders and board members would want the Weinsteins to leave in the first place. Simply getting the library would certainly be a boon to the company. But Disney will have to consider that the people who made those movies will be gone too.
Disney has already lost most of its animation department and is threatened with the departure of Pixar, the company that gave it hits such as "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo." Maybe its new open lines of communication are a concession that it cannot diverge from Walt Disney's vision of being a real motion-picture studio.
Michael Moore's controversial "Fahrenheit 9/11" is now up to $60 million total at the box office. It handily finished second for the holiday weekend, eclipsed only by "Spider-Man 2."
On any given day, "F9/11" did $4 million or more, better than Disney's "Around the World in 80 Days," which now has a total of $21 million in the till. On Monday, "80 Days" collected $400,000; "F9/11" had $4.6 million.
Disney stockholders and board members must at this point be scratching their heads.
A movie rejected by the studio is now a massive hit, putting money by the bucket load into the account of distributor Lions Gate Films. That studio gets 15 percent of the gross just for putting Moore's filmatorial in theaters.
Disney, on the other hand, put up $25 million for "80 Days." What's wrong with this picture?
But it's not all bad news for Disney. According to boxofficemojo.com, the documentary which the company did feel comfortable releasing, "America's Heart & Soul," took in $173,000 over the weekend.
P. Diddy's Hamptons Night of the Sardine
The 19-year-old coed, a friend of my friend's daughter, only wanted to see the "real" Hamptons this past weekend.
That meant the Hamptons she'd seen on television thanks to MTV, former-jailbird publicist-turned-celebrity Lizzie Grubman and documentaries about the rich and famous.
Unfortunately, the "real" Hamptons don't exist, which meant a lot of frustrated people tying up the two-lane road that runs from Southampton to Montauk with unbelievable traffic for two ghastly nights in a row.
Of course, the main party everyone wanted to attend was P. Diddy/Sean Combs's "White Party" at a corporate-sponsored house on Route 114 near Sag Harbor.
OK, listen: Corporate sponsorships and P. Diddy are to the "real" Hamptons what the Mall of America is to the lake country of bucolic Minnesota.
Granted, Diddy cajoled the elite of black celebrities, such as Aretha Franklin (looking grumpy and who could blame her?), Mary J. Blige, LL Cool J, the ubiquitous Russell Simmons and Rev. Al Sharpton, to appear at the White Party.
The house was jammed tight. There was no food, little drink and the opportunity to buy a T-shirt for $5 that read "Vote or Die."
Indeed, the White Party turned out to be some kind of political rally that ended with skits and a long-winded speech by Sharpton. It had not been billed that way, and was not so much of a White Party as a Filibuster. Hundreds were sardined into the house and even more were left outside with no hope of getting in.
Diddy showed up considerably late (what else is new?), which pushed the rest of the evening even later. The party had been called for 7 o'clock p.m. Diddy dallied in at exactly 9:50 p.m. after keeping 300 people waiting.
Following the White Party, certain guests were given tickets to an after-event at a place called the Star Room, a considerable distance away and accessible only via one lane. Fuhgeddaboutit. There may still be people waiting in the traffic to get within a half mile of the Star Room.
Some ditched their cars and walked; others gave up and headed to Jean-Luc East, where cappuccino and desserts provided an oasis.
Was this the "real" Hamptons? No, it was not. Neither were the stretch white SUVs that accompanied the White Party and its ancillary event.
There was plenty of the "unreal" Hamptons if you looked for it. Barry Diller's stepson, Alexander von Furstenberg, whose father, fashion designer Egon von Furstenberg, died three weeks ago in Europe, had his own big soirée in Southampton. Dan Kadison in the New York Post noted that Alex is now famous for "orgiastic" nights.
On Friday night, Paris Hilton, not the hotel, but the poor excuse for a productive human, blew through town.
But the "real" Hamptons were found at private dinners in people's homes, where there was conversation and the watching of fireworks.
Actress Ellen Barkin and husband, Revlon owner Ronald Perelman, had such an event at their estate — yes, they're together — with lots of A-list names and no one barring the door. Julianne Moore and Bart Freundlich were there, as was the couple of the year, Barry Diller and Graydon Carter. CAA agent Bryan Lourd, ex-husband of Carrie Fisher, was spotted.
At a jazzy barbecue thrown by publicist Norah Lawlor on Saturday night, I ran into, among other people, Lisa Ling, formerly of "The View" and now with National Geographic on TV.
She's just back from doing reports in Chechnya and other far-flung places. She was not selling any T-shirts, but later, she said, she was going to her old colleague Star Jones's engagement party.
At the barbecue, there was chicken and corn and cole slaw, a delicious pecan pie and big hunks of watermelon. All the women were tall and attractive or short and attractive. Everyone was let in, and a cool breeze blew through the backyard.
That was the "real Hamptons."
Fireworks in Malibu at the beach home of Universal Pictures' Ron Meyers.
You want stars? He had stars: Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, with kids; Dustin Hoffman, Bruce Willis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Jim Carrey, Garry Shandling, Diane Keaton, Sylvester Stallone, Cameron Diaz, Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers), record producer David Foster, record mogul Irving Azoff and Universal Music's Jimmy Iovine...
Caught up with ever-humorous Star magazine over the weekend. In a chart comparing Superman stars Christopher Reeve (the films), Dean Cain (recent TV show), and Jake Gyllenhaal (prospective new film Man of Steel), Star noted that each of the men is 6" tall (that's inches!)
I didn't know that, and I'm sure many readers were equally surprised. No mention of George Reeves, the original Superman, who had to be 6" tall to fit in the old TV sets! Thanks, Star!
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