Brooklyn Heights Blog

Former Saturday Night Live castmember and DUMBO resident Ana Gasteyer is very busy lately - she’s currently on Broadway in The Royal Family, will be appearing City Center’s production of Girl Crazy later this month and her  movie Dare opens this Friday (11/13).   So next time you see her in Gristedes, give her a high-five for being the hardest working person in Show Business. Read more »

Brooklyn Heights resident, former NYC mayoral candidate and world renown author Norman Mailer died two years ago today from acute renal failure.   We thought it appropriate to remember the cantankerous writer with this clip from his 1968 appearance on Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. Read more »

Brooklyn Heights resident and hipster icon Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT talks about living in the neighborhood and making the band’s new album with New York Magazine (they’re on the cover this week with other NYC bands):

New York Magazine: I never thought I’d live in Brooklyn Heights,” muses MGMT front man Andrew VanWyngarden, as he strolls down the leafy streets of the neighborhood where he resides, and where MGMT are finishing work on Congratulations, their follow-up to 2007’s neopsychedelic smash, Oracular Spectacular. “But it’s a nice place to come down off tour.”

Alexander Payne’s 2004 opus Sideways, which was a breakout role for Brooklyn Heights resident Paul Giamatti, has been remade in Japanese.  Director Cellin Gluck has unleashed his version of the film, with Giamatti’s character Miles transformed into the less edgy Michio, played by Fumiyo Kohinata.  The venue of the film is changed from Santa Barbara to the Napa Valley, which is more familiar to Japanese audiences.  That flip has at least one wine writer a little miffed and calling on Santa Barbara wine makers to try harder in making their brands more well known worldwide.

As for the movie itself, Japan Times writer Mark Schilling notes:

This is pretty much the approach of the entire film, which rounds off the original’s rough (that is, interesting) edges, particularly Paul Giamatti’s prickly wine-snob writer, while re-engineering the story for Japanese tastes.

This makes box-office sense, since a direct translation of the original would jangle local sensibilities like merlot in a sake cup. Gluck’s “Sideways,” however, has a play-pretend quality, like the Japanese boomers who dud themselves up in cowboy gear to listen to Hank Williams tunes at a club in the Harajuku area of Tokyo. Not that there’s anything wrong with it — but you would never mistake it for the real thing, would you?

You really need to see the trailer… after the jump. Read more »

Today Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham kicked off the eighth year of the ‘Take Your Man To The Doctor” health care campaign. There are 400,ooo Brooklynites without health insurance, men being twice as likely as women to be uninsured.

Markowitz asked Brooklynites to take the men in their life, whether straight, gay, or multiple partners, to have an annual check- up and develop a relationship with their health care providers.

Brooklyn reality TV stars Alex McCord and Simon van Kempen (“The Real Housewives of New York City”) revealed Mr. van Kempen had a heart scare a few months ago and has since quit smoking. Read more »

The Los Angeles Times profiles writer-director and Brooklyn Heights native Akiva Goldsman today.  Goldsman, who grew up on State Street, was the writer behind landmark Hollywood flops Lost in Space and Batman and Robin.  What a difference a decade makes for this former neighbor: he’s now riding a wave of success that began with A Beautiful Mind.

Los Angeles Times: He recently directed the season premiere of the Fox series “Fringe” and is now lining up his feature-film directorial debut. And despite having written what is perhaps the most reviled comic-book movie adaptation of all time, he’s aggressively pursuing his childhood love of superheroes as the producer of five movies based on Marvel or DC comic books.
On closer inspection, comic-book fantasy and dark psychology are the touchstone themes of Goldsman’s career. It’s a tandem that might make a therapist smirk or reach for their notepad, and the same goes for the 47-year-old’s memories of his childhood. The writer is the son of child psychologists Mira Rothenberg and S. Tev Goldsman, and the nature of his youth was a key reason that Grazer used the writer for “A Beautiful Mind.”

“I grew up, essentially, in one of the very first group homes for what was then termed as ‘emotionally disturbed children’ — these were days when, unimaginably, childhood schizophrenia and autism were lumped together in the same population,” Goldsman said. “My parents founded this home, and I grew up there in this brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and my peers were, um, crazy. My definition of sanity is very labile; it’s flexible and open.”

New Yorker writer/ Brooklyn Heights resident Tad Friend is interviewed in the Arizona Republic about his new book, Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor:

Arizona Republic: Question: What is a WASP?

Answer: The standard definition, “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant,” seems to me overly broad. It takes in people like Bill Clinton, who is technically a WASP, but doesn’t really fit anyone’s mental picture of one. Or Elvis Presley, for that matter. But the shorthand definition would be someone with a fancy name who went to a fancy school and grew up mostly in the Northeast.

The Wall Street Journal also spoke to Friend:

WASPs, Mr. Friend says in the book, won’t talk about money unless it’s to do with necessary expenses (that rules out any mention of income or elective expenditures). They name their dogs after liquor and their cars after their dogs. They tolerate family members’ eccentricities, as long as they show up for Christmas. And they believe in putting on a good face, especially in hard times.
The book originated with a New Yorker article Mr. Friend wrote in 2006 after the death of his mother Elizabeth Groesbeck Pierson, a complicated woman who put her dreams of writing poetry aside to be a good wife to Theodore “Dorie” Wood Friend III, an historian who became the president of Swarthmore College. His mother would later become an interior designer and painter.

The Brooklyn Bugle gang including your pals from Brooklyn Heights Blog and Cobble Hill Blog will be out in full force this Sunday (10/4) at the Atlantic Antic. Our tent will be stationed in front of the Atlantic Bookshop between Court and Clinton Streets.  We’ll have limited edition Bugle T-shirts that feature a cool Brooklyn Bugle logo remix by Brooklyn Tattoo’s Adam Suerte (while supplies last!!).

Stopping by the big tent — BHB Ten members Melanie Hope Greenberg (10:30am - 11am) and SNL writer Simon Rich (1pm).

Greenberg will be hosting a storytime for kids at 10:30 am - children of all ages are welcome!

Rich and his writing partner/ New Yorker cartoonist Farley Katz will stop by the tent at 1pm to meet and greet fans.  Their New York Superheros cards will be on sale in our tent from 1pm - 2pm.

We’ll be taking photos, shooting video and live blogging from the Antic as well.  Stop by and say hello!

See you Sunday!

Public records confirm that pop star Bjork and her artist husband Matthew Barney have closed the deal on their Brooklyn Heights penthouse.   It does remain to be seen if the couple actually move in.  Gawker alleged relationship issues betwen the two last month.   Guess we’ll have to wait to see  Bjork  shopping at Ricky’s Halloween store on Montague Street for confirmation. [via Brownstoner]

NYSD photo

The Brooklyn Heights brownstone of designer Kathryn Scott and artist Wenda Gu is featured in New York Social Diary:

NYSD: They are both organized and thorough to a point that fascinated us. Kathryn physically learned how to do various skills such as carpentry when the house was being renovated (one floor also serves as an office space) and, a linguist, she made sure she knew enough Chinese to get Chinese craftsmen to perfect her designs for various projects in China, where they also own property.

More photos at New York Social Diary.