Around 9pm at the New Museum on Bowery, Radar editor Maer Roshan, dressed in an extremely well-fitting John Varvatos suit, was standing next to the bar. The suit was dark, but it wasn't entirely clear what color it was in a dimly lit room on the ground floor.

Mr. Roshan's magazine was throwing a party intended to honor "the most exciting rogues, renegades, and rule-breakers of the year." Film-maker Craig Brewer, writer Shalom Auslander, and Squid and the Whale star Jesse Eisenberg, among other rogues, renegades, and rule-breakers, were in attendance.

As Mr. Roshan surveyed the room, he considered the best time of year to host a party. "Summer, I think."  read more »

Jesse Eisenberg, who recently spoke to the Observer about his Off-Broadway play Scarcity, will star as drug-dealing Hasidic Jew in the comic drama Holy Rollers.

The Hollywood Reporter tells us:

The film, one of the first to emerge from the burgeoning "Jewsploitation" genre, is ripped from true-crime headlines and follows an impressionable youth (Eisenberg) from an Orthodox Brooklyn community. He's lured into becoming an Ecstasy dealer by a friend ([Justin] Bartha) with ties to an Israeli drug cartel. Newcomer Danny Abeckaser is set to play the owner of a club where they do their decidedly unkosher business.

Set in 1999, Antonio Macia's screenplay was loosely inspired by real-life 1990s-era crimes where Hasidim were recruited as mules to smuggle drugs into the U.S. Production is slated to begin in the spring in New York.

“It’s like a messy play, nothing feels concrete,” said Jesse Eisenberg about Scarcity, an off Broadway show at the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater stage.  read more »

“I do yoga and I try to get Tom to join in,” said Kathy Freston.  read more »

Let The Transom take you deep inside the first world, where Viacom king Tom Freston does a mean downward-facing dog; where any public interest in the shooting of The Devil Wears Prada evaporates when Meryl Streep isn't on set; where Jesse Eisenberg, the young star of The Squid and the Whale is not yet glib with reporters; and also where Marc Levin's new documentary gets, or requests, the heat from the Nation of Islam.

Jason Binn bought a really expensive apartment. Relatedly: The Transom figures that a two-million-dollar apartment is the kind of thing that really brings solace when one is wheezing on one's deathbed.