New York Times:

As first lady of New York City during much of the 1990s, Donna Hanover — the former Mrs. Rudolph W. Giuliani — surely developed an opinion or two about the ferocity of the City Hall press corps. This spring, in an instance of art imitating life, she’ll have a chance to show what she thinks of the Fourth Estate when she makes her Broadway debut playing a presidential campaign reporter in the revival of “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man,” the producers announced on Wednesday.

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In an exchange of letters with Ian Buruma in the New York Review of Books, in 2001, Gore Vidal discussed the role of the administration of Pres. Franklin Roosevelt in provoking the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which was 70 years ago today:

New York Theatre Guide:

Emmy Award winner Eric McCormack (“Will & Grace”) will return to Broadway as presidential contender ‘Joseph Cantwell’ in the 2012 Broadway revival of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man.

McCormack is best known for his eight seasons as “Will Truman” on NBC’s Emmy-winning “Will & Grace” that earned him a Screen Actor’s Guild Award, five Golden Globe nominations, and the Emmy Award for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He made his Broadway debut starring as ‘Harold Hill’ in ‘The Music Man,’ and starred Off-Broadway in the American premiere of Neil LaBute’s ‘Some Girl(s).’

McCormack will join the previously announced Emmy and Golden Globe Award winner Candice Bergen ( (Alice Russell), five time Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Gamadge), Tony and Emmy Award winner John Larroquette (William Russell), and Academy Award nominee Michael Mckean (Dick Jensen) and Oscar, Emmy and Tony Award winner James Earl Jones (Arthur Hockstader).

The Best Man will open on Broadway on 1 Apr 2012, following previews from 6 Mar 2012, at a venue to be announced.

Interviewed for Vogue in her home in the Hollywood Hills, Oscar-winner Charlize Theron is mentions that one of her neighbors, a famous author, is an opera fan:

Paparazzi escaped, we drive down the hill to Theron’s house, a 1920s Spanish colonial hidden behind an inconspicuous gate. She has owned it for fifteen years, and as we walk inside, it unfolds like a long, breezy weekend—sunlit sitting areas, a vast open kitchen, a backyard with a pool and long communal tables and couches. “That’s my clubbing,” she says, pointing to the comfy outdoor spread, where nights with friends can stretch into the early morning.

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A photo of Gore Vidal is included in “California Song,” the new one-man show by French fashion-designer-turned-photographer Hedi Slimane at the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.

Slimane’s early work depicted the resurrection of the punk aesthetic in Great Britain and other scenes in Europe. By contrast, the MOCA show presents Slimane’s vision of California, where he now resides, according to Vogue:

Mike Carlton, columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald:

When I was a kid I wanted to be an American. Passionately, longingly. Viewed from No. 53 Orchard Road, Chatswood, America beckoned like El Dorado, a shimmering kaleidoscope of glamour and riches.

Wrapped in Old Glory, John Wayne and Henry Fonda had won World War II. Americans had rock’n'roll, blue suede shoes and the Beach Boys; skyscrapers and freeways; Ford T-bird convertibles cruising to drive-in hamburger stands; drugstores filled with soda pop and unbelievably exotic ice-cream.

Everyone lived in a sparkling white rancher on Main and Elm, with a mom who looked like Doris Day and a dad like Cary Grant. Co-eds in rope-stiffened petticoats jived at junior proms, whatever they were. On Channel Nine’s Mickey Mouse Club, an essential cultural feast at No. 53, there was a girl called Darlene, as cute as a June bug, with flashing eyes and black plaits falling over rosebud breasts that pushed, hypnotically, at her tight white sweater.

So whatever happened to Darlene and whatever happened to America?

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Broadway World:

Emmy and Golden Globe Award winner Candice Bergen, five-time Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury, Tony and Emmy Award winner John Larroquette and Drama Desk Award winner and Academy Award nominee Michael McKean will join the previously announced James Earl Jones in the Spring 2012 Broadway revival of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man.

The play will be directed by Michael Wilson, who received the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Director of a Play for the acclaimed epic production of Horton Foote’s The Orphans Home Cycle Part I, II and III at the Signature Theatre Company, and also directed Foote’s Dividing the Estate on Broadway.

Gore Vidal’s The Best Man will begin rehearsals on Monday, January 30, 2012, with the first preview performance on Tuesday, March 6, 2012. An official opening is set for Sunday, April 1, 2012, at a Shubert Theatre to be announced.

Over the weekend, James Earl Jones was honored for the body of his work by AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Jones accepted the award from London, where he is appearing opposite Vanessa Redgrave in Driving Miss Daisy.

It is fair to say that few developments in the current century have troubled civil libertarians, including especially Gore Vidal, more than the enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was signed into law by George W. Bush ten years ago today.

Vidal has compared it with the Alien and Sedition Acts during the John Adams administration, as a result of which around two dozen Americans, including the grandson of Benjamin Franklin, were arrested for expressing views that people in power did not like. He has also said, “The USA PATRIOT Act is as despotic as anything Hitler came up with — even using much of the same language.”

The genesis of the act is particularly troubling. It was written in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks when the public mood was a toxic mix of patriotism and panic. It sailed through Congress with bipartisan support, passing in the House by 357 to 66 and in the Senate by 98 to one. Bush signed it six weeks after the attacks, on October 26, 2001.

“They were suspiciously very ready with the Patriot Act as soon as we were hit,” Vidal said, in a 2002 interview for “LA Weekly” with Marc Cooper. “Ready to lift habeas corpus, due process, the attorney-client privilege. They were ready. Which means they have already got their police state. Just take a plane anywhere today and you are in the hands of an arbitrary police state.”

Gore Vidal received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ACLU of Southern California during ceremonies at the ACLU/SC’s annual garden party, on Sunday, September 18, 2011.

After brief remarks, Vidal took questions from the audience. Earlier in the day, he autographed books for ACLU/SC members and guests.

Other honorees included Ramona Ripston, who received the Stanley Sheinbaum Award for her 38 years of service as the ACLU/SC’s executive director, and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, who received the organization’s Legislator of the Year Award.

For information about the ACLU/SC, visit the organization’s website, www.aclu-sc.org.

Earlier this year, Gore Vidal sat down with Riz Khan to discuss the late Italo Calvino, an author whose work Vidal greatly admires. We’re publishing the interview now in commemoration of what would have been Calvino’s 88th birthday, on October 15.