"Hearsay... blabber mouth ...chatter... rumour... natter... scoop... chin-wag... catch
gapseed... play telephone... grapevine... buzz... pickmouth... the low down... babble... talk
dirt... broadcast... report... gossip... prate... blab... scuttlebutt... tattle... scuttlebutt!"
So go the slogans on t-shirts at the famed Sip Sip restaurant on Harbour Island in the Exumas.
- One of the stars of Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful hit is charming little Joey King, whose name you may not place right away, but you'll never forget her as the crippled girl in the black and white beginning of the new Oz film. She's the one the country crowd demands that traveling magician, Oz, make her get up and walk. James Franco, our unlikely hero, escapes in a balloon to a place later to be named Oz, after him.
And later, Joey herself appears in Oz, walking, smiling, dancing and singing along with the residents of Oz and the Munchkins. More importantly and poignantly, she is the voice of the delicate and wounded China Girl, who is rescued and put back together by Mr. Franco.
Joey and her family had been on tour for Oz in London, and they returned to the U.S. they thought, in time to catch the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. (Alas, the weather didn't cooperate and they were on their way home to Simi Valley in California when they decided to a night of the incredible Taylor's "Red" evening.)
Joey King started acting when she was four. She says she inherited acting from her grandmother who had worked in theater. She has appeared on CSI, Entourage, Medium, The Haunting Hour, Avenging Angel and she has completed three pilots. She was a series regular on Bent where she says "Jeffrey Tambor made me laugh ever
She was only nine when Taylor caught her in Ramona and Beezus.
y day."
Joey has had some prestigious directors telling her what to do -- Christopher Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises and Roland Emmerich in White House Down, plus Sam Raimi who captured her heart, says she, with his gentle patient demeanor in Oz.
I was quite impressed with Joey. And later when we were all sitting in the high reserved seats right in front of Taylor Swift's stage, I got a big kick out of watching young girls come up to pose for telephone cameras with Joey King.
If Taylor was the Queen, Joey was the Princess of the night!
P.S. Joey has three more big-screen movies upcoming -- The Conjuring, White House Down and Family Weekend. On TV there's "R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour."
- Those of you trying, with me, to teach several million New York City adults how to read and write at the fifth grade level, might want to drop by Michaels popular cafe tomorrow, Wednesday, from 6 to 8 p.m. as we begin our kickoff for the grand Literacy Partners night at Cipriani on May 1.
At that time, we will have such stars as the best-selling Bill O'Reilly, who will have three books on the list in 2013, as well as Pulitzer Prize winners Jon Meacham and Elizabeth Strout, honorees Tatiana von Furstenberg and thriller writer Patricia Cornwell. Jackie Weld Drake will also be honored with the Lizzie Award.
Call Buckley-Hall at 212-573-6933 for details.
- Incidentally, my new friend, Taylor Swift, will be appearing as a guest star on Fox's Season 2 finale of "New Girl" come May 14. She will join Zooey Deschanel and the gang as Elaine, an "important guest" at Cece and Shivrang's wedding. Ok, Ok, so Entertainment Weekly got this story first. But maybe this is time to remind you young 'uns to jot down the date!
My longtime friend Holland Taylor, of Two and a Half Men fame, is going to play the late Governor of Texas, the popular and dynamic Ann Richards, through September 1 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center in an extended run through what would have been Ann's 80th birthday! Be sure you see this show.
I just last week recorded an interview for a documentary on Ann that the wonderful Sheila Nevins is over-seeing for HBO. But I know I will never do Ann Richards justice.
- Sunday night's season premiere of HBO's dazzling Game of Thrones was predictably low-key -- sort of re-establishing the character's motivations. Of course, there were unexpected moments of gore and one especially well-acted scene by Emmy-winner Peter Dinklage as the justifiably embittered Tyrion Lannister. Though scarred in battle, threatened by his evil sister (Lena Headey) and cruelly dismissed by his father (Charles Dance), Tyrion hasn't lost his fabled wit.
And the luscious Natalie Dormer, so well-remembered as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors, is coming into her own, married off to the half-mad Joffrey (played with delicious, mounting instability by Jack Gleeson), but with a clear agenda of her own. There's a lot going on in Game of Thrones but it remains a fascinating adventure. With dragons!