Morning Report - News from Feb. 27, 2002

MOVIES

Crowe Lashes Out After Awards Speech Is Cut

Actor Russell Crowe (“A Beautiful Mind”) recited a poem--Patrick Kavanagh’s “Sanctity”--during his best actor acceptance speech at the British Academy Film Awards dinner on Sunday. And he didn’t take well to the news that the BBC had eliminated the segment due to time constraints.

According to the London newspaper the Sun, the actor pinned the show’s director, Malcolm Gerrie, against a wall at the after-awards dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel.

Gerrie was talking to pop star Sting when two of Crowe’s security men escorted him to a storage room where the actor launched into a tirade, the paper said.

He swore repeatedly at the executive who, he threatened, would “never work in Hollywood.”

DreamWorks, which released “A Beautiful Mind,” and the actor reportedly apologized to Gerrie, who the studio acknowledged was “shaken up a bit.”

A spokesman for Initial, the production company headed by Gerrie, said, “We think Russell behaved unreasonably. It is a live show and has to be edited quickly. Other speeches had to be cut, as well.”

TELEVISION

Aaron Sorkin Targets the Real White House

Aaron Sorkin, creator of NBC’s “The West Wing,” says the entire country--including his own network--is “pretending” that President George W. Bush is competent and brave.

In an interview with the New Yorker magazine, released on Monday, Sorkin said that while the country was correct in “laying off the bubblehead jokes” about its president during the war in Afghanistan, the news media had gone too far.

One example he cited: the NBC special “The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing,” which was hosted by the network’s chief news anchor, Tom Brokaw.

“The White House pumped up the president’s schedule to show him being much busier and more engaged than he is, and Tom Brokaw let it happen,” Sorkin said.

“The show was a valentine to Bush,” he added. “That illusion may be what we need right now, but the truth is we’re simply pretending to believe that Bush exhibited unspeakable courage at the World Series by throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium or that he, by God, showed those terrorists by going to Salt Lake City and jumbling the first line of the Olympic opening ceremony. The media is waving pom-poms and the entire public is being polite.”

A spokesman for NBC was not immediately available for comment.

POP/ROCK

Cher Takes Umbrage

at Statue Cover-Up

Cher took time out from publicizing her new album, “Living Proof,” to deliver some choice words about U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft--specifically, last month’s decision to throw curtains over the bare-breasted statue “Spirit of Justice” and her skimpily clad male partner “Majesty of Law,” which have stood in the Department of Justice’s Great Hall since 1936. Ashcroft, who reportedly had expressed discomfort at holding press conferences in front of the statues, denies ordering the statues covered.

In a phone call to the Washington Post, the singer acknowledged that she’s not “the bastion of good taste,” but is concerned about the direction in which the nation is moving.

“What are we going to do next? Put shorts on the statue of David, put an 1880s bathing suit on ‘Venus Rising’ and a shirt on the Venus de Milo?,” she asked. “If they start doing that, maybe they’ll start deciding what books are all right for us to read and we’ll start losing all of our freedoms. It’s shocking.

“If he doesn’t want to make speeches in front of them, let him make speeches somewhere else,” she scoffed. “He’s mobile.”

THE ARTS

Lincoln Center Ready

to Name New Leader

Lincoln Center is expected to get a new president Thursday when its board officially appoints Reynold Levy, currently head of the International Rescue Committee. A search committee has already recommended Levy to take over the $500,000-a-year post left vacant when Gordon Davis resigned in September.

Managing the city’s most prominent arts center has proven to be a different job because of the need to mediate among its 13 constituent organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic, and the board, headed by former opera star Beverly Sills.

Levy, who previously headed the city’s 92nd Street Y, will take office while Lincoln Center is trying to finance a $1.2-billion redevelopment project during a difficult time for fund-raising.

QUICK TAKES

Previews of “Occupant,” a new two-person play by Edward Albee about sculptor Louise Nevelson, are on hold until its star, Anne Bancroft, recovers from pneumonia. She is expected to return to the off-Broadway show March 19 and appear during the last three weeks of the run.