John Turturro | The New York Observer

John Turturro: 'I Don't Consider Hillary Clinton a New Yorker'

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:16:48 -0500

At the Moth Ball on Tuesday, Nov. 18, Salman Rushdie was awarded the 2008 Moth Award for his storytelling abilities and everyone wore silly hats in the tradition of the whimsical literary organization. But the cocktail chatter centered around the question of: Was she or wasn't she?

"Well, has she been yet?" Mr. Rushdie asked when the Daily Transom inquired what he thought about Barack Obama offering the Secretary of State job to Hillary Clinton....

Gaga for Galas? Not This Year, Say Socialites

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:16:34 -0400

The Metropolitan Opera’s opening-night gala—held this year on Monday, Sept. 22—is one of the premiere fall benefits. It precedes other major society happenings like the Whitney Museum of Art gala on Oct. 20, the New York Public Library Lions Benefit on Nov. 3 and the Lincoln Center gala on Nov. 10. But while tickets to all of these have already sold out, some guests wondered how the big society benefits will continue to fare...

General Lee

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:07:16 -0400

Miracle at St. Anna
160 Minutes
Written by James McBride
Directed by Spike Lee
Starring John Turturro, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi, John Leguizamo

Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna, from a screenplay by James McBride (in English, Italian, German and Spanish, with English subtitles), is based on Mr. McBride’s heavily researched novel. Before launching...

Nobody [Messes] With The Community Bookstore!

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:17:39 -0400

Brooklyn-based actor John Turturro has stepped in to help bail out Park Slope's debt-ridden Community Bookstore, according to Sunday's New York Times.

Facing foreclosure, the owner of the Seventh Avenue indie retailer, Catherine Bohne, reportedly "offered up to 49 percent ownership in the store to a group of friends willing to put up at least $10,000 apiece," and Mr. Turturro, a frequent customer, was among the first in line.

"[A]ll these great small bookstores and...

The Singing Director

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:06:21 -0400

When John Turturro mined the subsoil of his Brooklyn childhood in order to write and direct Romance & Cigarettes, getting filthy apparently wasn’t a concern. The racy musical dressed in a romantic comedy’s clothing, which is playing now at Film Forum, mixes up a stiff cocktail of the scruff-and-buff passions of a New York City ironworker (James Gandolfini) with a score that reads like a tabletop jukebox. The cast—Mr. Gandolfini stars alongside...

An Exceptional Cast Rescues Reza’s Folly

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:00:00 -0500

“Actors? Actors are cowards. Actors have no guts,” announces the actor at the start of Yasmina Reza’s A Spanish Play at the Classic Stage Company. In which case, may I welcome back with open arms to the New York stage one of the gutsiest of them all, Zoe Caldwell. She’s among the greatest actresses this country has known, and won her fourth Tony for her Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s 1995 Master Class. Ms....

Three Men and a Babe Meet at McCool's

Sun, 06 May 2001 20:00:00 -0400

Harald Zwart's One

Night at McCool's , from a screenplay by the late Stan Seidel (1952-2000), is the kind of movie that, as I was watching it, I was preparing to dismiss as a broad, cartoonish sex farce, straining for as many cheap laughs as it could get this side of Three Stooges–like smuttiness. That is, until its wow ending, with one of the funniest and most imaginative sight gags I have seen since the golden age of the great...