| Happy Birthday Richard Gere!! August 31, 1949 -Your date of conception was on or about 8 December 1948 which was a Wednesday. -You were born on a Wednesday under the astrological sign Virgo. -Your Life path number is 8. -Your fortune cookie reads: Keep your plans secret for now. Life Path Compatibility: -You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 4, 8, 11 & 22. -You should get along well with those with the Life Path number 6. -You may or may not get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 1 & 5. -You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 3, 7 & 9. The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2433159.5. -The golden number for 1949 is 12. -The epact number for 1949 is 0. -The year 1949 was not a leap year. Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 1/29/1949 and ending 2/16/1950. You were born in the Chinese year of the Ox. Your Native American Zodiac sign is Bear; your plant is Violets. You were born in the Egyptian month of Hathys, the third month of the season of Poret (Emergence - Fertile soil). Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 6 Elul 5709. Or if you were born after sundown then the date is 7 Elul 5709. The Mayan Calendar long count date of your birthday is 12.16.15.13.15 which is 12 baktun 16 katun 15 tun 13 uinal 15 kin The Hijra (Islamic Calendar) date of your birth is Wednesday, 7 Dhi'l-Qa'dih 1368 (1368-11-7). The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 17 April 1949. The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 24 April 1949. The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 2 March 1949. The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 5 June 1949. The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 12 June 1949. The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Saturday, 24 September 1949. The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Thursday, 14 April 1949. The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 1 March 1949. As of 8/31/2008 3:03:33 PM EDT You are 59 years old. You are 708 months old. You are 3,079 weeks old. You are 21,550 days old. You are 517,215 hours old. You are 31,032,903 minutes old. You are 1,861,974,213 seconds old. -Celebrities who share your birthday: Chad Brannon (1979) Jeff Hardy (1977) Chris Tucker (1972) Deborah Gibson (1970) Richard Gere (1949) Van Morrison (1945) Itzhak Perlman (1945) Eldridge Cleaver (1935) Frank Robinson (1935) James Coburn (1928) Buddy Hackett (1924) Alan Jay Lerner (1918) William Saroyan (1908) Arthur Godfrey (1903) Maria Montessori (1870) -Top songs of 1949 Riders In the Sky by Vaughn Monroe That Lucky Old Sun by Frankie Laine Cruising Down the River by Blue Barron (also Russ Morgan) A Little Bird Told Me by Evelyn Knight Mule Train by Frankie Laine Some Enchanted Evening by Perry Como You're Breaking My Heart by Vic Damone Slippin' Around by Margaret Whiting & Jimmy Wakely Forever and Ever by Russ Morgan A You're Adorable by Perry Como Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 8.43444227005871 years old. (You old hound dog, you!) -Your lucky day is Wednesday. -Your lucky number is 5. -Your ruling planet(s) is Mercury. -Your lucky dates are 5th, 14th, 23rd. -Your opposition sign is Pisces. -Your opposition number(s) is 3. -Today is not one of your lucky days! -There are 365 days till your next birthday on which your cake will have 60 candles. -Those 60 candles produce 60 BTUs, or 15,120 calories of heat (that's only 15.1200 food Calories!) . -You can boil 6.86 US ounces of water with that many candles. -In 1949 there were approximately 2.8 million births in the US. -In 1949 the US population was approximately 131,669,275 people, 44.2 persons per square mile. -In 1949 in the US there were approximately 1,595,879 marriages (12.1%) and 264,000 divorces (2%) -In 1949 in the US there were approximately 1,417,000 deaths (10.8 per 1000) -In the US a new person is born approximately every 8 seconds. -In the US one person dies approximately every 12 seconds. -In 1949 the population of Australia was approximately 8,045,570. -In 1949 there were approximately 181,261 births in Australia. -In 1949 in Australia there were approximately 72,999 marriages and 6,572 divorces. -In 1949 in Australia there were approximately 75,260 deaths. -Your birthstone is Peridot -The Mystical properties of Peridot -Peridot is used to help dreams become a reality. -Some lists consider these stones to be your birthstone. (Birthstone lists come from Jewelers, Tibet, Ayurvedic Indian medicine, and other sources) Sardonyx, Diamond, Jade Your birth tree is Pine Tree, the Particularity Loves agreeable company, very robust, knows how to make life comfortable, very active, natural, good companion, but seldom friendly, falls easily in love but its passion burns out quickly, gives up easily, many disappointments till it finds its ideal, trustworthy, practical. There are 116 days till Christmas 2008! There are 129 days till Orthodox Christmas! The moon's phase on the day you were born was in its first quarter. All in his name Richard Tiffany Gere... There are 18 letters in your name. Those 18 letters total to 105 There are 6 vowels and 12 consonants in your name. What your first name means:Teutonic Male Powerful ruler. Shakespearean Male 'Henry IV' Richard Scroop, Archbishop of York. Sir Richard Vernon. 'King Henry V' & 'Henry VI, 1, 2, & 3', Richard Plantagenet. His son, Richard. 'Richard II'. 'Richard III' Richard, Duke of York, Edward IV's son. Sir Richard Ratcliff. German Male Powerful; strong ruler. A Teutonic name from the European Middle Ages. England's King Richard Coeur de Lion was a crusading knight. French Male Powerful; strong ruler. A Teutonic name from the European Middle Ages. England's King Richard Coeur de Lion was a crusading knight. English Male Strong ruler. Your number is: 6 The characteristics of #6 are: Responsibility, protection, nurturing, community, balance, sympathy. The expression or destiny for #6: The number 6 Expression provides you a truly outstanding sense of responsibility, love, and balance. The 6 is helpful and ever conscientious, making you quite capable of rectifying and balancing any sort of inharmonious situation. You are a person very much inclined to give help and comfort to those in need. You have a natural penchant for working with the old, the young, the sick, or the underprivileged. Although you may have considerable creative and artistic talents, the chances are that you will devote yourself to an occupation that shows concern for the betterment of the community. The positive side of the number 6 suggests that you are very loving, friendly, and appreciative of others. You have a depth of understanding that produces much sympathetic, kindness, and generosity. The qualities of the 6 make the finest and most concerned parent and one often deeply involved in domestic activities. Openness and honesty is apparent in your approach to all relationships. If there is an excess of the number 6 in your makeup, you may exhibit some of the negative traits associated with this number. There may be a tendency for you to be too exacting and demanding of yourself. In this regard, you may at times sacrifice yourself (or your loved ones) for the welfare of others. In some cases, the over zealous 6 has difficulty distinguishing helping from interfering. You may have difficulty expressing your own individuality, because of involvement with responsibilities and causes. Like all with the Expression of the number 6, it's quite likely that you worry much too much. Your Soul Urge number is: 3 A Soul Urge number of 3 means: With the Soul Urge number 3 your desire in life is personal expression, and generally enjoying life to its fullest. You want to participate in an active social life and enjoy a large circle of friends. You want to be in the limelight, expressing your artistic or intellectual talents. Word skills may be your thing; speaking, writing, acting, singing. In a positive sense, the 3 energy is friendly, outgoing and always very social. You have a decidedly upbeat attitude that is rarely discouraged; a good mental and emotional balance. The 3 Soul Urge gives intuitive insight, thus, very high creative and inspirational tendencies. The truly outstanding trait shown by the 3 Soul Urge is that of self-expression, regardless of the field of endeavor. On the negative side, you may at times become too easygoing and too optimistic, tending to scatter forces and accomplish very little. Often, the excessive 3 energy produces non-stop talkers. Everyone has faults, but the 3 soul urge doesn't appreciate having these pointed out. Your Inner Dream number is: 3 An Inner Dream number of 3 means: You dream of artistic expression; writing, painting, music. You would seek to more freely express your inner feeling and obtain more enjoyment from life. You also dream of being more popular, likable, and appreciated. |
August 21, 2008 Outer Bankers soon will be treated to close-ups of movie stars Richard Gere and Diane Lane frolicking on their beach, zipping down their road and snuggling at their pier. An invitation-only showing of "Nights in Rodanthe," the silver screen version of Nicholas Sparks' bestselling tear-jerker, has been scheduled for Sept. 24 at the R/C Kill Devil Hills Movies 10. That's just two days after the premiere in New York City, and two days before it will be released nationwide. It will be released abroad in November. There will be about 210 seats available for residents who participated in the production - as extras, consultants, security, musicians, caterers - during the six weeks it was shooting on the Outer Banks. "From a ticketing standpoint, we want to take care of everybody, not just those who were in front of the camera," said Carolyn McCormick, managing director of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau. "I think the challenge will be that we put the tickets in the hands of the people who were part of making it happen." McCormick said she had hoped the screening, which Warner Bros. is providing at no cost, could be held at the movie theater in Avon, near the Hatteras Island village the movie is named after. But she was happy that at least the islanders will see it second, just two days after the Hollywood elite do. Location shots were also taken in Wilmington, N.C. Their movie screening will be held on Sept. 25. Despite its wealth of beautiful coastal scenery, the Outer Banks' remote location and sparsity of amenities in the past made it undesirable as a movie location because of the expense. "Message in a Bottle," another Sparks novel that was made into a film, for instance, was set on the Outer Banks, but the location shoot was in Maine. When Hollywood arrived here in May 2007, Outer Banks residents lined up by the hundreds for a chance to be extras; others lent their businesses or employees to the effort. Serendipity, a large beach house on the edge of the ocean in Rodanthe - temporarily renamed The Inn at Rodanthe - served as the setting for many of the movie's intimate scenes. For the few weeks the movie was being shot, the favorite sport among locals was sightings of Richard Gere and Diane Lane, the stars who played the romantic lead roles and stayed at the Tranquil House Inn in Manteo. In addition to the beach house, location shoots were done at the Hatteras Island Fishing Pier in Rodanthe, on the Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry, on Ocracoke Island, in Manns Harbor and in Manteo. "Nights in Rodanthe," published in 2002, is about a retired doctor who visits the northernmost Hatteras Island village to come to terms with a patient's death. While staying at the beachfront, he falls in love with the inn's caretaker, a middle-age mother whose husband had left her for another woman. Scenes in the movie trailer show soaring aerial footage of the beach house with crashing waves in front; another aerial shows Gere speeding down the highway in his expensive sports car, the sound and ocean on either side. One shot locals will get a kick out of is a scene with Lane laughing as wild horses run on the beach - a sight that would have had park rangers circling in no time. Accurate or not, the movie gives the Outer Banks worldwide exposure, McCormick said. A number of promotions tied to the movie are in the works nationwide and internationally, she said. And even after the movie leaves the theaters, the DVD will soon follow. "The fact that the movie is called 'Nights in Rodanthe,' " she said, "you can't pay for that." |
| Why Hollywood loves New York cop movies By PATRICK HUGUENIN Saturday, August 16th 2008, 4:00 AM This summer, "New York City heat" didn't only mean sticky temperatures - it meant a cavalcade of cop movies filmed on New York's streets and sidewalks. Richard Gere looked dapper in uniform for "Brooklyn's Finest," while the remake of the subway-jacking classic "The Taking of Pelham 123" meant the occasional staged squad-car pileup. Heading into fall, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro will polish their detective badges for "Righteous Kill" (opening Sept. 12) while Ed Norton investigates department corruption ("Serpico," anyone?) in "Pride and Glory" (out Oct. 24). Meanwhile, fans await "NYPD Blue" creator David Milch's return to the New York cop drama with "Last of the Ninth," a show in development for HBO. Hollywood's fascination with police movies and shows set in the city has generated classics such as "The French Connection" and long-running hits such as "Law & Order." We can think of seven reasons that blue is back: 1. THE JOB New York's onscreen detectives are reliable for their adherence to procedure - and for the fact that, if pushed, they might take things into their own fists. "Actors love to play New York City cops," says Harry Medved of movie-ticketing site www.Fandango.com. "They get all these great speeches where they get to dress people down - all these chances for heavy-duty dramatics." 2. THE LOCATIONS New Yorkers know the unique joy of seeing their neighborhood coffee shops and garages used as the site of assaults and kidnappings on "SVU." As a movie set, the city's geography means action. "New York is really in so many ways the epicenter of the world and the center of all things exciting," says Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir. "The tunnels and the dark parks and the dark streets add to the atmosphere." 3. THE UNIFORMS Gere proved blue is the new black when he set fans swooning in Brooklyn this summer. Then there's the trench-and-fedora getups of New York's classic detectives. And undercover cops can learn something from Pacino's Frank Serpico: The best disguise is a beard. 4. THE CAR CHASES In an action-packed genre, the streets, sidewalks and elevated subways of New York offer the most harrowing obstacles. Since "The French Connection's" subway versus sedan race, New York has set the standard for hot pursuits. "Take a scene like in 'The Bourne Ultimatum,'" says Medved, "which was shot all around the globe - London, Paris, Morocco. But when it came time for their car chase sequence, where did they shoot it? New York City. It was just so amazing to see the car crushing other cars or trying to avoid running into people." 5. THE VICTIMS Shows like "Law & Order" have a knack for making plot lines out of headlines. Setting the drama in New York means that the viewer gets to watch as the onscreen doppelgangers of famous socialites, politicians and stars kick the bucket. 6. THE VILLAINS New York means a variety of villains from Son of Sam to the Second Ave. Slasher - and, if we may claim Gotham, The Joker. You get crazies - think Alan Arkin terrorizing Audrey Hepburn in "Wait Until Dark" - and sympathetic crooks, such as Pacino's fumbling bank robber in "Dog Day Afternoon." 7. THE HEROES New York has enough real-life police heroes for countless movies, and our good guys range from Jerry Orbach's Detective Lennie Briscoe to Bruce Willis' John McClane. So what makes the cop character so great? "Deep down, like all New Yorkers, he's got a true soul and true feeling and true warmth," says Saffir. "Even if that's often masked by a really tough bravado." |
| August 8, 2008 Q&A with Walter Knabe: Painter, printmaker and surface designer by Konrad.Marshall President Benjamin Harrison Home Stutz Art Space Artist and Designer Walter Knabe holds up a silk screen on the production table at Walter Knabe Studios in the Stutz Building in Indianapolis. (Heather Charles/The Star) Artist and Designer Walter Knabe at Walter Knabe Studios. (Heather Charles/The Star) Artist and Designer Walter Knabe stands in front of several of his new wall coverings called Edelweiss. (Heather Charles/The Star) Artist and Designer Walter Knabe stands between production tables at Walter Knabe Studios in the Stutz Building. (Heather Charles/The Star) Cincinnati-born Walter Knabe is a painter, printmaker and surface designer whose iconic pattern work sells nationally and internationally, and whose fine art lives in many public and private collections throughout the country. Knabe, 54, who has a design studio in the Stutz Building, combines energetic colors and motifs with an Old World craftsmanship and sensibility. Having studied in Missouri and Wisconsin, Knabe married and moved to New York in the late 1970s, where he ended up working for Andy Warhol, mastering the techniques of screen-printing before applying those skills and other talents to custom wall coverings and fabrics. For 25 years, his studios have been a trusted source in the interior design industry, with commercial client commissions including Chanel, Harrods, Trump Plaza, Bloomingdale's and the White House. Private collectors of his work include Warhol, as well as artists Keith Haring and Philippe Starck, and celebrities including Michael Jordan, Madonna, Spike Lee, Bill Cosby, Andre Agassi and Neil Simon. Knabe's patterns can be transferred -- and indeed are -- to frames, ties, scarves, purses and some clothing ("Surface design can be taken in so many directions"), and he's taking his fine art in new directions, although the precise direction is quietly guarded, for the moment. Question: What was it like for you, starting out in design school at 14? It was just a natural fit for me, even that young. I just gravitated toward it, I always perceived things very visually. I was really struggling with it, when I was having to do realistic artwork. Then a college professor came into the high school I was at and started showing abstract work, showing Jackson Pollock and Matisse, and it just blew me away. And virtually the next day I started doing this abstract work. I just took right to it, and it was very successful right away. What was the next step? Actually, it was while I was in high school, and it was trying to get involved with people that were professionally involved with the arts, which I did. There was a conceptual artist from Germany, and there was a gallery dealer there who was nationally known, so I started working with his gallery for public projects that they were doing. I really got a very early introduction to some high-end and professional projects. As an undergraduate, you studied under Thomas Hart Benton, who passed away in your junior year. What was that experience like for you? He was known as a regionalist, and did a lot of mural work and very narrative scenes of early American life. But what was interesting was that he had such a deep understanding of classical art, which he imparted to me. He had me do an exercise taking an El Greco painting and breaking it down in four or five steps until it became a Cubist painting. Then, of course, his most famous student was Jackson Pollock, and he would talk about how Jackson Pollock would call him crying on the phone, saying, "My art's a mess, I can't figure this out," and he'd go, "Yeah, and I'd tell the son of a bitch he couldn't draw," and hang up on him. He was pretty curmudgeonly, if you will. I didn't understand the perspective of him in the history of art -- we just thought of him as this cranky old guy who wasn't doing very hip work. You got your master's in Wisconsin before moving to New York in 1979. That must have been exciting. I actually think it was probably more fun to move there then. I mean, it's so depressing for me to go to Soho and see it so polished up. It was just so nice then and so cool, and so much exciting stuff was going on. And even then, of course, it was terribly expensive, but not compared to now. It was a very interesting time. A lot of things were starting to unfold and develop. The ugly art scene was just starting to emerge, and at that point, I had started working with Andy Warhol, through some friends of ours. One gallery dealer who knew my work said she didn't have room for me in her gallery, which I was terribly disappointed about, but she said, "I do know a studio that's looking for some help." So I went up to the studio and it turned out to be Andy Warhol's. It was no longer The Factory when I got there. He had two business managers, if you will, who were very interested in making money. I started as a schlepper and then we helped work on the artwork actually. It was pretty in the mainstream and pretty hands-on. It was very off and on, over a period of several years. What do you think is the most common misconception about Warhol, having worked closely with him? The biggest misconception is that you see that outward persona, which is a maniac. But he always used to be down at the soup kitchens helping serve food, and he'd be in church every Sunday. So I think that's probably pretty telling. What made you decide to move into custom wall-coverings and fabrics? Actually, it had to do with a client who saw my artwork, and my artwork had patterns on it even then. I was always intrigued by the idea of pattern and the narrative of pattern. So I was doing very large-scale gridded paintings, and this woman saw the gridded paintings and said, "I want you to cover all my walls with your artwork." I did it on canvas, so she could take it with her when she left this enormous Upper East Side apartment. We got it all installed and saw it as an installation, of course, and turned around and said, it's almost like wall covering. So we started doing these hand-done wall coverings on canvas and selling them by the yard, and got a showroom and started to launch it. The idea of making a living at some sort of art was fascinating, and it was a very natural segue, given the type of art I was doing. Did you find it as fulfilling, artistically? I did. The dichotomy is that, of course, there's a separation of the two by the nature of the application and the function, but I have always skewed this boundary. To this day, I think what I'm excited about with the new body of artwork that I'm going to do is that it's going to be very narrow and much more intellectual and going to address those issues in a more profound way as opposed to a more decorative way. You've done commercial commissions for Chanel, Harrods, Trump Plaza, Bloomingdale's and the White House. What's your favorite? I think some of the things for Harrods. I love the location, of course. My wife was working with the British Embassy, so we were in London quite a bit. Important to my work is a sense of antiquity, so the idea, the amount of antiquity that's present at Harrods, and the fact that they were very receptive to doing something more eccentric, which was what they really wanted. So given those two factors, I felt like I was in the right place. You also have an impressive list of private collectors. Who was the most fun to work with? Most of them I met, some I didn't. The most intriguing project was with Richard Gere. We actually did a Tibetan meditation hut in the middle of his apartment. We were trying to come up with some way to make it look authentic. And we actually ended up putting straw in the paint, which is actually an old, early American method of covering walls that they would use for some form of insulation. But it was very applicable for the look of a hut. What I loved about it, and what it helped develop for me in my personal work, was what I now refer to as a sense of collision with the work, which is something that I really embrace, and that is the idea of having two elements that collide, that either bombard one another or don't have anything to do with each other, or are total contrasts from each other, but actually accentuate each other and become a positive and change our perspective on things. So the idea of this hut in this gorgeous high-end apartment, that collision was just very dramatic, and it always stuck with me. I'm thinking about a different collision now -- can you reveal who you clashed with most aesthetically? Usually, if a client is hiring the studio, they obviously know what we do, and that's what they're looking for. But there was one couple who will remain nameless who wanted me to put themselves nude on repeatable wall covering, in every room. And that project didn't quite work out. You've been doing interior design for 25 years now, so you've seen styles around you come and go. What style do you wish had never been? I think when we start doing it on the heels of getting into the '80s, we all know what '80s music was like. There was a lot of very aggressive painterly wall coverings that we did in the '80s that were very exciting, but there was also a lot of stuff in the '80s that just didn't seem to have much merit and really wasn't very good design. Do you think people are going away from wallpapers and simply painting their interiors these days? Actually, I think it's reversing. It dipped in the early '90s. But the late '90s and into 2000 was all about faux-finishing. We don't do a lot of interior design. We only do a couple of projects a year, most of which are not local. But when we do, it's interesting, because we'll utilize it in various design ways -- it may create a vignette out of a room, or it may separate a section of a room, or be a narrative for an entry or something like that. But I think the use of wall covering is really coming back very strong. We've noticed it with our sales, and also nationally. The thing is, you don't have to cover everything with it. Often, designers will do just a feature wall, and we'll help them get exactly what they're looking for. That's our niche. We have a new Web site that just got up, and it's really geared toward the interior designer, to look at the entire collection, and there's even a section to do a little custom work, custom color things on the Web site. It's a lot of fun. If you weren't doing what you do now, what would you be? That's who I am, and that's what I do. That's just the way it is. I think if anything, I'd just be traveling more. That's becoming more of a priority. The input on the artwork from traveling is just tremendous. The universal element of people itself intrigues me. I think the mission statement, the key to it, is having a sense of antiquity, so we don't forget our history and are respectful of it, which I think grounds us in the present, and having that grounding in the present I think gives us a sense of responsibility about what we're doing, and then hopefully that will lead to a sense of posterity. That statement is what I actually think of consciously, a lot. It's what we try and work toward. You moved to Indianapolis about 12 years ago because it's where your wife is from? And we had two little kids at the time, and raising them in New York was getting to be havoc. And the night that my daughter called out for the nanny instead of my wife kind of sealed the deal. What kind of design community did you find when you got here? It kind of felt pretty sporadic, and I did obviously have very big concerns about moving here at that time, and being able to function in a creative environment. But, of course, I was set up nationally, so it really didn't matter where I was doing things. People didn't even care. But what's amazing is how much the community has developed. And how much the Cultural Development Commission and the Arts Council have done, and how much support they have gotten and continue to get. And I think a part of that is the recognition that it does indeed help business. It's not like it's just blind -- it's a very positive and productive thing. Your work is fairly high-end. Do you have any design tips for regular folks? It's much like when people ask you what kind of art they should buy -- you should buy what you like. So if they're going to start to design, they should design with what they like. And they should start to think about items and icons that represent things personal to them. I think it's very important to surround yourself with those kind of personal totems. And highlight those, because those are the things that create your own sanctuary, your own personal story, and I think ultimately that's what we're trying to do. Benjamin Harrison Home gets artist's touch To see some of Walter Knabe's work in person, take a trip to the President Benjamin Harrison Home, where he's been replicating historic wallpaper found during past renovations. Phyllis Geeslin, executive director of the home, said much of the wallpaper in the building had gotten away from what it once looked like, due to several years of redecorating. Knabe was approached to lend his expertise to a restoration after portions of the original design were found. Knabe said he particularly enjoyed the investigation the project required, looking through old photographs, newspaper clippings and letters to make sure the color and pattern repeats were perfectly replicated. "This is a historic project, with resonance and reference to history, which adheres to my own thesis of always looking to the past for a sense of reverence and posterity," Knabe said. |
| Brooklyn to Hollywood: That’s Some Subway Ride MICHAEL C. MARTIN sat in the back of a musty soul-food joint in Bushwick, Brooklyn, eyeballing two men in police uniforms who were arguing at a table by the front window. The younger man’s voice was angry and rising, hushed only by the growling of a train clawing its way across the elevated tracks outside. ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’ Phil Caruso/Warner Brothers Ethan Hawke as a police officer in "Brooklyn's Finest." Mr. Martin watched as the men carried their argument into the street, where it quickly escalated into a fistfight with body slams and bloodied knuckles. Passers-by gathered around the two men, some cheering and pumping their fists. Others who stumbled on the scene looked on in disbelief. Are those police officers fighting? Wait. Is that who I think it is? Is that Richard Gere? Mr. Martin barely batted an eye. “Cut! Cut! Cut!” yelled Antoine Fuqua, the director of “Training Day” and now this film, “Brooklyn’s Finest,” shot on location in Brooklyn last month. “Who the hell is this guy in my shot? He does it every time.” A member of the film crew rushed over to the massive storefront window, glaring into the street searching for the misguided extra. “He’s someone who will never be in the shot again,” the crewman assured the visibly frustrated Mr. Fuqua, who was rubbing the back of his bald head. A few seconds later Mr. Gere staggered in from the sidewalk, nursing his elbow as he joined Mr. Fuqua to review tape of the scene. Then before long there was silence, and then “Action!” And again Mr. Gere was in the street, in the middle of the block, tussling with an actor probably half his age. As strange a scene as it was that day in a neighborhood more accustomed to real-life drama, even more extraordinary is the story of how Mr. Martin, a 28-year-old former subway worker from East New York, Brooklyn, came to write “Brooklyn’s Finest,” a gritty thriller starring Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke and Mr. Gere as police officers in a housing project. Mr. Martin, who in his dusty white FUBU sneakers, denim shorts and a short-sleeve, button-up shirt looked that day more like a college senior than a Hollywood writer, is a onetime film student who remains a few credits shy of his degree from Brooklyn College. His most recent job was subway flagger with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; he waved flags and set up warning lights in subway tunnels to warn approaching trains that construction crews were working on the tracks. The whole movie thing, he said, happened sort of by chance. In 2005 a car accident left him injured and his 1991 Lincoln Mark VII totaled. While he would need three months of physical therapy to deal with a bulging disc in his back, his obsession focused less on mending than on making some extra cash to buy a new car. Surfing the Web one day he came across a call for submissions in a screenwriting competition. The grand prize was $10,000. So he began to write the first scenes of what he called “kind of an epic”: the intertweaving stories of three police officers who have misplaced their moral compasses and grown to hate themselves a little along the way. “I didn’t expect ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’ to get made,” Mr. Martin said. “It wasn’t Hollywood overnight. It was, ‘I’m still working my 9 to 5, and I’m still writing, and I’m still trying to make my dream happen.’ ” Mr. Martin did not win that contest. He came in second, winning copies of IFP newsletter, which offers articles about the independent film scene. But his script got the attention of a few people in the business. Soon he had an agent and a chance to write an episode of “Sleeper Cell,” the Showtime series, since canceled, about terror cells in America and the agents who track them. About a year after the contest Mr. Martin’s agent submitted the script to Warner Brothers on spec for a job writing the sequel to the urban cult film “New Jack City.” It landed in a pile of scripts on the desk of the producer Mary Viola. She liked it so much that she not only wanted Mr. Martin to do the “New Jack City” project but proposed that the “Brooklyn’s Finest” script be made into a feature- length movie. Within weeks the project got the go-ahead. Mr. Martin was paid $200,000 for the script with handsome box-office incentives. After Mr. Fuqua came on board, the big-name cast (Wesley Snipes also stars as a drug dealer recently released from prison) quickly signed on, many taking large pay cuts to work on the film, budgeted at about $25 million. “I’ve been dealing with making movies for 30 years — more than 30 years, almost 35 years — and I’ve worked with a lot of writers who would try to come up with something like this and would fail,” Mr. Gere said a few days after filming wrapped last month. “It’s got such a wonderful structure to it, besides the innate rhythm and nature of it. The structure was a really terrific movie structure. It’ s basically three short stories, very tangentially connected, unexpectedly, contrapuntally working together.” John Langley, a producer on the movie and the creator of “Cops,” the long-running Fox television show, said Mr. Martin had delivered “the most realistic cop script that I’ve ever read.” “It’s about inner-city problems, it’s about problems in police departments, it’s about their relationship, it’s about drugs, it’s about society,” Mr. Langley said. “He captures something screenwriters in Hollywood aren’t necessarily going to capture: the smell, the taste, the feel, the reality, the sensibility, the environment, all of these things and the layers that you don’t normally get from people sitting around making up scripts.” For Mr. Fuqua, whose last foray into the world of corrupt cops, “Training Day” (2001), garnered a best actor Academy Award for Denzel Washington, “Brooklyn’s Finest” also offered a chance to exorcise a bitter piece of history. Back in 2004, a month before the scheduled start of filming on “American Gangster,” Universal Pictures scrapped Mr. Fuqua’s vision for the movie at a cost of $30 million. The studio, Mr. Fuqua said on the set of this film, wanted something slick and shiny. (At the time Universal cited creative differences for Mr. Fuqua’s departure amid reports of an escalating budget and the lack of a final shooting script. The movie was later filmed with Ridley Scott as director.) “I wanted to put it in the ’hood and make it as real and gritty as I could make it,” Mr. Fuqua said. A few days after the shoot in Bushwick the crew on “Brooklyn’s Finest” headed back to the Van Dyke housing projects in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to capture some of that grit. Phil Caruso/Warner Brothers Pictures Antoine Fuqua, the director, on the set with the actor Wesley Snipes. The buildings there loom tall, burnt-orange brick and glass jutting from the concrete-covered earth. About 4,410 residents live in the Van Dyke houses’ 23 buildings, all within a few blocks, pressed hard against dozens of other public housing complexes where, like these, hard-working parents and children are stacked on top of one another amid hustlers, whores and killers. Like many of the neighboring communities Brownsville can be a dangerous place where people often still die by the gun, unlike many other parts of Brooklyn. On this day in July residents gathered along closed-in courtyards, keeping an eye out for famous faces milling around. “Hopefully them being here shows people that it ain’t as bad as they think it is out here,” said Franklin Quinones, 26, a resident of the Van Dyke Houses. This is the world that inspired much of Mr. Martin’s vision of the film. His childhood home, where his mother still lives, is just two subway stops away. He grew up in East New York, “in the best part of a bad neighborhood,” which he loved despite the horror stories. A basketball star until a torn A.C.L. derailed those hoop dreams, he caught the filmmaking bug in a film appreciation class at South Shore High School. “It’s all the great art forms rolled in one,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of it.” He enrolled in the film department at Brooklyn College. He directed and produced a short movie as a class project, but, he said, he was not able to bear taking the final requirements, like a science class, so he took a gig at the M.T.A. nearly five years after submitting an application. But he did not let go of his moviemaking aspirations — or memories of his formative years. “The wildest thing, more than anything, is that we shoot in these locations that I’ve been to for years and years, passing by most of my life,” he said. “This movie is really just based on everything I’ve kind of seen throughout my life. It’s not an autobiography, but it’ s just those places, the people, the sounds and the look.” The naysayers said that filming in the area would be trouble. City officials warned that crew members could be assaulted, possibly bricked and bottled, and that they’d be cussed at and unwelcome, Mr. Martin and Mr. Fuqua recalled. “People say: ‘Aw, man, you can’t shoot there. No one’s ever done it. Can’t go in there,’ ” Mr. Fuqua said. “But it’s been fantastic. The people, the kids running around. A few young guys post up hard, sometimes people would lay on the horn a little longer than you’ d like, but still and all they really showed a lot of love.” Before the shoot ended, Mr. Fuqua donated $100,000 of professional camera equipment to four teenagers he selected for a filmmaking program he created. “Brownsville, we never get none of this,” said Bryan Martin, 16, one of the participants. “We don’t get nothing, no kind of recognition. And a lot of guys don’t get a chance to get out of the neighborhood, so it’s amazing for them to come to us.” Mr. Martin credited his Brooklyn upbringing and his years working for the city’s transit authority with giving him a breadth of experiences to use in writing the script. “You grow up in New York, and you work at a place like the M.T.A., you come across a lot of personalities,” Mr. Martin said. “You get a good understanding of people and their differences and the conflicts they have with each other from where they are and their perspectives on life, religion, politics. It all kind of melts together.” This is a whole new world for Mr. Martin: the stars, the press, the whirlwind of energy and the anticipation of what could be. But he seemed to be settling into his role as a professional screenwriter. Already he’s begun writing the straight-to-DVD sequel to “New Jack City.” And he and his fiancée, Maria, the parents of a 9-month-old-son, Ricardo, are thinking of moving to California. Still, some of his family haven’t bought into all the hype, he said. “My grandmother says the funniest thing,” he said. “She says now that I’m a screenwriter, my handwriting must be getting better. And my mother still thinks that being a paralegal is the greatest job possible. Even when I told my mother they’re going to greenlight the movie, that they’re going to start shooting it, she was like: ‘You know what? I got these brochures about being a paralegal. You should check it out.’ “She comes down to the set, and she still says that.” Mr. Martin laughed. “I think she just wants me to be grounded.” |
| Richard Gere slips into SA Biénne Huisman Published:Aug 03, 2008 ‘Hillary got up, clapping and dancing along’ Hollywood leading man Richard Gere dined on seafood, sipped jasmine tea and kept a very low profile on a secret movie shoot in South Africa. Security around the actor was tight as he shot scenes for Amelia — a biopic on the American pilot Amelia Earhart — in the Eastern Cape, Johannesburg and Cape Town this week. But the Sunday Times pieced together details about the silver-haired star’s stay in SA. Gere — who turns 59 at the end of the month — portrays magazine publisher George Putnam, who married Earhart, played by double Oscar-winner Hillary Swank, and made her famous as a pioneering pilot. The actor stayed in a humble R200-a-night cottage at a small hamlet near Kei River mouth last weekend and took meals at the Seagulls Hotel. Hotel manager Jean Sahd said the actor had “such charisma” about him. “I first met him on Saturday afternoon when he arrived. I nearly died, I was so nervous,” she said. The hotel held a welcoming party for the stars, treating them to traditional dancing and platters brimming with fish, oysters and calamari steaks. “The kitchen staff were singing Xhosa welcome songs. Richard was loving it and Hillary got up, clapping and dancing along,” said Sahd. Gere was reportedly booked in under the name “Dr Brown” while Swank was in character as Amelia Earhart. Earlier in the week Gere was spotted on a film set at Rand Airport, east of Johannesburg, getting into a maroon vintage sports car. The film’s cast and crew moved to Cape Town on Wednesday to more luxurious accommodation at the Mount Nelson Hotel. Gere was seen tucking into a lunch of yellowtail and jasmine green tea at the hotel’s Oasis Lounge on Thursday. Women gaped at the actor, famous for roles in movies such as Pretty Woman and American Gigolo. But he was content to have lunch by himself. Staff at the hotel said he mostly took meals in his room. Earhart made history and captured the public’s heart when she set out in an old Lockheed Electra airplane with co- pilot Fred Noonan on June 1 1937 in an attempt to fly around the world. The aircraft disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. There are various theories on the mysterious vanishing act. To this day, Earhart and her plane have not been found. The movie will wrap up in South Africa on Tuesday and is expected to hit cinema screens later this year. |
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| Gere jets in, goes under the radar Jul 31, 2008 ‘Pretty Woman’ star is filming in Joburg, Cape Town Richard Gere sent hearts soaring at Rand Airport, east of Johannesburg, yesterday. The 1980s heart-throb was shooting a scene on the set of his latest film, Amelia. The film is based on the autobiography of American pioneer woman aviator Amelia Earhart. The Times yesterday spotted the suave Gere, in a dark, 1930s-style suit, climbing into a vintage maroon sports car. Gere plays the role of George Putnam, Earhart’s husband, in the film. The famed female explorer disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make a flight around the world in 1937. The title role is played by two- times Oscar-winner Hilary Swank, who celebrated her 34th birthday yesterday. She is also believed to be in the country, but managed to evade The Times yesterday. Fellow cast member Ewan McGregor, who plays Gene Vidal, with whom Earhart had a passionate affair but did not marry, was also nowhere to be seen. Yesterday, the film set was swarming with security and crew members, who were protective of the Pretty Woman actor. Gere refused requests for interviews and a crew member said he rarely speaks to the media while in character. Photographers were barred from taking pictures. The veteran star — who was once voted People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive — looked at ease and jovial, chatting and drinking coffee with people on set. A hangar at the small airport was used as a dressing room and refreshment centre. The Times was told that shooting on Amelia wrapped up in Johannesburg yesterday. Filming will resume today in Cape Town. The movie is due for release next year |
| ''It's New York tough-guy stuff,'' says Richard Gere of the NYPD-centric Brooklyn's Finest, ''but it's universal like the best dramas are.'' The movie reteams Ethan Hawke (pictured, as Gere's fellow cop) with his Training Day director, Antoine Fuqua. |
| Try a Richard Gere Puzzle! For more puzzles go to the Puzzle Page. |
| Please note ~ The views and opinions of this article are not that of the web hostess! I truly think this man is JUST JEALOUS ;o) |
| The Argument Against Richard Gere Richard Gere will appear in at least five films between now and the end of 2009. There is a good chance that your girlfriend or wife will drag you out to see at least one of them, a good chance that you will think it is bad and that he is bad in it, and a good chance that, upon relating this criticism to her, she will dismiss it with a "You're just jealous." Jealous of Richard Gere, that is; she'll accuse you of being jealous of Richard Gere because he is handsome, and she'll imply that you're trying to undermine his good looks by conjuring up a lack of talent. This happens to guys all the time. It happened to me as recently as a week ago, when my mother and girlfriend subjected me to a viewing of Chicago. I told them that I thought it was a boring and perverse female fantasy, and they told me that they thought I was jealous of Richard Gere. This frustrated me for the same reasons that similar reactions have frustrated other men I've discussed this with: There are a lot of handsome men in Hollywood, a lot of Brad Pitts and Christian Bales and George Clooneys, yet only a handful of them inspire a backlash among men in the way that Richard Gere does. At AM, we've done some thinking on the topic and have now crafted our argument against Richard Gere. And we have the statistics to support it. Here we present both to you, so you'll have something to bore your girlfriend with after she's bored you with a screening of Shall We Dance. Actors vs. pretty boys Each gender pool in Hollywood hosts its share of eye-candy players: actors who have a more limited range than their peers, but are much more awesome to look at. One such female is Angelina Jolie, a gorgeous, voluptuous creature who will never play Simone de Beauvoir but who will always pull in tons of cash at the box office as a sexy assassin or vampire. Among the men, we have Hugh Grant, who makes the girls slide off their chairs with his dimples and blue eyes, best put on display when he plays the befuddled romantic Englishman. Grant knows that this role is his bread and butter so he sticks to it, and it keeps making money for him. The red bars on the graph below represent movie budgets and the green bars represent movie revenues. In each of the movies plotted on this graph, Grant has played the befuddled romantic Englishman, and each of them has raked in the bills. You may not enjoy watching them, but you gotta respect Grant for recognizing the role that his abilities lend themselves to, and for sticking to it. |
| Pretty boys overstepping their boundaries Not all pieces of male eye candy, however, display the vision and restraint that Grant does. There are a few overambitious bad seeds who overstep the boundaries of their talent and attempt to play androids or historical figures, resulting in excruciatingly bad movies that your girlfriend will drag you to simply because they are in it. Some examples that spring to mind are Jude Law and Matthew McConaughey, but the focus of the present argument is Richard Gere. Gere made his name playing a man-whore in American Gigolo and a sexy guy in uniform in An Officer and a Gentleman, and these kind of roles worked, so he stuck with them. Pretty Woman was an enormous hit that led to more enormous hits like Runaway Bride, but somewhere along this time line, Gere's ego began to outpace his better judgment and he decided to expand his repertoire. You can see some of the results in the graph below. |
| The conclusion: Richard Gere was not destined to play a sniper in The Jackal or a reporter in The Mothman Prophecies. He was destined to play a good-looking, crinkle-eyed doctor, as he did so well in Dr. T and the Women and Final Analysis, and as he will again this September in Nights in Rodanthe. So there is no reason for him to continue wasting our time and other peoples' money by clumsily executing roles not meant for him, and it his persistent determination to continue doing so that turns men against him. So there you have AM's argument against Richard Gere. It is here for you to use, so please do so -- we can guarantee that your girlfriend will give you the opportunity soon enough. Know, however, that your referencing it may be taken as further evidence of your jealousy, just as my taking the time to actually make these graphs will be interpreted as testament to mine. |
| This car features in the movie Amelia and was driven by Richard Gere |
| The house from Nights In Rondanthe starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane |
| The wonderful fall movie season has begun and so here come the good trailers. First we have Nights of Rodanthe. It is another Nicholas Sparks sappy novel turned movie reuniting America's favorite pairing of Richard Gere and Diane Lane. Richard plays a tortured brilliant surgeon who was blamed for the death of a patient (btw James Franco plays his surgeon son. Oh yeah.) and Diane plays a devoted mother and wife whose husband cheats on her. So apparently they meet each other one weekend in a magical place called Rodanthe which has wild horses for some reason. Diane totally sports a mom haircut but we know this woman has been in some of the best sex scenes of all time (hello! orgasm memory scene on the train in Unfaithful.) |
| TOP 10 ON-SCREEN KISSES THE FILM MOMENTS THAT MADE YOU WEAK AT THE KNEES Posted: Monday 11 Aug 2008 |
| Coming in at #6 |
| Coming in at #5 |
Above: Molly Ringwald & Michael Schoeffling Below: Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman |
| August 15, 2008 |
| Coming in September 26, 2008 |
| View article now! |
| Gere proposes union Aug 17 2008 Hollywood star Richard Gere says actors in South Africa should form a union to fight for the rewards due to them. Gere, in South Africa to film the movie Amelia, which also stars Hillary Swank in the title role as American pilot Amelia Earhart, told Cape Town actress Bridget McCarthy he was disappointed that local actors were not unionised. “He told me that US actors only started making money once they had formed a union,” said McCarthy, who plays Earhart’s secretary Nora. — Lauren Cohen |
| August 21, 2008 |
| Outer Banks site of 'Night in Rodanthe' screening "Nights in Rodanthe" stars Richard Gere and Diane Lane. RALEIGH (AP) - The Hatteras Island residents who worked behind the scenes and in front of the camera on "Nights in Rodanthe" will get a chance to see the movie before it opens nationally next month. The invitation-only screening of the movie starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane will be held Sept. 24 at a theater in Kill Devil Hills. A second screening will be held the next night in Wilmington. Carolyn McCormick, managing director of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, said she's offering the 210 seats first to locals who worked on the movie, including extras, police officers who provided security and people who worked at the pier where the movie was screened. If there's room, local officials such as mayors will be invited, she said. "The list will concentrate, No. 1, on all of the people who made it happen," she said Wednesday. The screening will be held at Kill Devil Hills, which isn't on Hatteras Island, because the island's only theater will have closed for the season by then, McCormick said. The movie screens Sept. 25 in Wilmington, then opens nationally and in Canada the next day. It opens internationally in October. The movie is based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks, who lives in New Bern, and focuses on a relationship that develops when Gere's character visits an inn that Lane's character is caring for during a nor'easter. A real nor'easter that later became Subtropical Storm Andrea developed during filming in May 2007. In an interview last month, Sparks said the movie shows off North Carolina's coast. "There are these scenes in Rodanthe, and you just get the wind-swept, austere beauty of the Outer Banks," he said. "It's co-mingled with a story that I'm proud to have written and that translated well to film." It's unusual for a movie to be filmed in its "real" location - "Bull Durham" is another - and McCormick hopes to take advantage of that to market the Outer Banks. "It's not often you have a movie named after the place that it actually was filmed, so we've got a lot of opportunities," she said. She's working with Warner Bros. for promotions such as a free stay on Hatteras Island and hopes to market the area abroad, where the bureau typically couldn't afford such promotions. In addition, the movie is targeted to women ages 40 and older, the same target market for the bureau, she said. "They hit our target market, they showcase our incredible island" and it will show in international markets "that we can't afford to be in on our own," she said. "And the title is 'Nights in Rodanthe.' It couldn't get much better than that." |
| You Tube video of Richard Gere from the protest in San Fansisco in April, 2008 |
| Site created by Girvin Richard Gere's non-profit foundation brings assistance to Tibet. The Gere Foundation website conveys the foundation's mission: to assist the cultural survival of the Tibetan people through health, technological and educational projects. The site also provides history about the Tibetan tragedy, encourages visitors to become active through Healing The Divide (the public arm of the Gere Foundation), and previews Richard's riveting photography from his book Pilgrim. At Girvin, ruby founder Ms. O'Kelley acted as primary account contact and site project manager. |
| “Tibet has a precious culture based on principles of wisdom and compassion. This culture addresses what we lack in the world today; a very real sense of inter-connectedness. We need to protect it for the Tibetan people, but also for ourselves and our children,” said Richard Gere, Chairman of the Board of the International Campaign for Tibet. Tibetan cultural festival 2008 at Lake Tahoe today through Sunday |
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