"I'M 24! I think it's a little early for all that."
Daniel Radcliffe, sensibly answering Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire query about his "greatest regret."
Daniel's life motto is succinct: "Don't be a dick."
•R.J. Wagner and Jill St. John are returning here to New York on the wings of a huge success.
He was on numbers of best-seller lists with his latest You Must Remember This and that hoopla caused his first memoir, titled Pieces of My Heart, to land on another best-seller list at the same time.
I am so proud of this very nice guy. We are celebrating together again on April 29th.
•MEANTIME, I am going to be interviewing in person Mr. and Mrs. Frank Rich (she's Alex Witchel of The New York Times) for a fundraiser for Maria Droste on April 22nd. Call 212-889-4042 about tickets and the address in the 60's.
This one is a pet of mine and we always have fun putting famous people on the griddle.
•I HAVE written over and over about my super talented friend Tommy Tune who is doing his life story in song and dance on stages all over the world that are too small for his a'bounding talent.
He opens again for two weeks at Feinsteins at Loews Regency on April 22nd a Tuesday. You must have plenty of money and lots and lots of love but this nine-times Tony winner is so great. Go to www.feinsteinsattheregency.com for tickets.
•LAST OCTOBER, French director Patrice Chereau passed away. It was probably noted in the U.S. but I didn't see any obits. I would have made mention of this, because Chereau directed one of the great films of the 1990s -- of anytime, actually -- Queen Margot. This was an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' novel, based on the real-lives of King Henry of Navarre, his reluctant bride, Margot, the monstrous Catherine de Medici, and the blood-soaked persecution of the Huguenots.
On Monday, April 28th there will be a special screening of Queen Margot honoring director Chereau, at the Director's Guild Complex in Los Angeles. How I wish this were happening in New York! I'll never forget staggering out of the screening of Queen Margot back in 1994. What a movie! It was lush but grimy, romantic but filthily realistic. You could almost smell the sweat and blood. (It was a dirty time in civilization, this movie captures the ripeness.) Isabelle Adjani, as Margot is dazzling, and she is matched by Daniel Auteuil as Henry, and Virna Lisi, vicious ambition personified as Catherine. Vincent Perez also appeared as La Mole, Margot's paramour. (Their love scenes, and his nudity, were a sensation at the time.)
I also think back on Queen Margot with fondness because it was one of the early releases from Harvey Weinstein's Miramax. I raved about the film in my syndicated column. And again, and then again. Harvey was sweetly appreciative and it began a friendship that endures to this day. When I saw how Harvey publicized Queen Margot and how committed he was, artistically, to his product, I knew he was a major player -- Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer rolled into one.
If Queen Margot is out on DVD, somebody let me know!
•ENDQUOTE: "The revelations have challenged basic assumptions about what is private...we suddenly live in a very different world. People trust the Internet and their devices much less than they did."
This is from Vanity Fair's big take on Edward Snowden, by Suzanna Andrews, Bryan Burrough and Sarah Ellison. The piece is like a delicious, daunting hard candy, with Snowden as the soft, uncertain center.
Everybody has their opinion on Snowden -- traitor or patriot. But I have to take issue with the above quote and its wider implication. I recall in the 1990s when I was pushed full-force into the Internet and e-mail -- I fought mightily! Discussing the matter of e-mails, I mentioned to a computer guy who had come over to my office to further instruct me, "Well, this is great, I can just delete things, nobody can save my letters. "
He said, "Miss Smith, nothing is deleted forever."
"What? But what about permanent delete?"
"It's still on the hard-drive of your computer."
"Uh, but if I destroy my computer hard-drive?"
"It's still out there. If anybody is interested in your mail, they can find it. It's...in the air."
That was an important lesson. And in the years since, how often did I read stories about Internet mail being snatched out of the "air" for various reasons. On top of that, what government, at any time, in any era, didn't keep track of as many people as possible? (J. Edgar Hoover, anybody?) Each decade brought new advances in surveillance -- on everyone. And from the tragedy of 9/11 onward, the alert was clear -- we were all under the microscope. Type "Al Qaeda" on your keyboard and don't be surprised if the FBI comes knocking.
There is a disingenuous naiveté attached to reactions to the Snowden revelations -- we are "shocked, SHOCKED," that the NSA knows all.
Well, I wasn't. And I really do think there are some things that shouldn't be made public. We spy on them. They spy on us. That's world politics. Trust and Utopia is someplace else.