While pondering academic analyses of the appeal of "Borat," I learned that Luenell, the L.A. comedian who plays Borat's love interest in the movie, graduated from Castro Valley High School and lived in Oakland for at least 10 years. Comedy impresario Lisa Geduldig hired Luenell for three "Funny Girlz" shows here. "My total roots are in the Bay Area," Luenell said by phone Tuesday. She was in the middle of an Urban Comedy Tour and had just taken part in BET's hip-hop awards show for broadcast Wednesday.
I asked about complaints from people who appeared in "Borat" and claimed they'd been duped. "That's too bad for them," Luenell said. "All the movie did was expose their racism and sexism. They want to say that stuff in only their private wink-wink way." The filmmakers got releases from everyone involved, she said, and she didn't think they'd have any basis for legal complaint. "If they want to f -- with Fox, they can go right ahead."
As to the movie's portrayal of loutish students, the filmmakers had "found them drunk already. They said they were shooting a documentary. Maybe they (the students) thought their little friends wouldn't find out what they say in private. But I don't say anything in private that I wouldn't say in public."
I said I'd found the movie very funny. "You haven't laughed yet," she said. "You wait until the DVD comes out with the deleted scenes. You go to the bathroom first, and then you grab a tub of popcorn and then you watch it."
Frederic Desagneaux and his wife, Dalal, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Les Dames d'Escoffier and the 160th birthday of Auguste Escoffier , who was to French cooking as Einstein was to relativity. Many local foodies and eaters were there, and hors d'oeuvres prepared by Jean-Pierre Dubray , Gerald Hirigoyen , Elizabeth Falkner , Duskie Estes and Annie Somerville were served.
As an avid kitchen-iste, I asked to peek into the place where these delectables were being prepared. M. and Mme. Consul General live in a grand Pacific Heights home, and the kitchen was hopping, trays of fancy little bites being passed from preparers to servers. There was a huge stove, sink and work island and many pots and pans hanging overhead.
But it didn't look as though they were much used, and there wasn't a place to sit down for breakfast with a newspaper and croissant. "The French don't eat much breakfast," Dalal Desagneaux explained, adding that most dinners are working occasions, and the family doesn't get to choose its own meals all that often. When their diplomatic service in San Francisco ends next summer, she said wistfully, they'll leave without having the opportunity to try many of the restaurants they've read so much about. At that, somewhere in a grand kitchen in the sky, the ghost of Escoffier picked up his dish towel and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
Matthew Bourne , creator, director and choreographer of "Edward Scissorhands," was at Tuesday's North American premiere of the show, which has played in England, Japan and Korea. In comments echoing what Cherry Jones had said a few nights ago about audience reaction to "Doubt," he said that audience reaction in Asia was unsettling. "They didn't react to anything. They were quiet all the way through."
There was huge applause at the end, something like 15 bows, and afterward, a sizable crowd would gather at the stage door. But in the middle of the show, there was little applause and no laughter. For the performers, "I have to be honest," Bourne said, "it's not great. You think everything is falling flat."
In particular, Joyce, a vamp played by Michela Meazza, seemed to make audiences in Asia uncomfortable. It was "almost as though she were naked onstage," Bourne said. San Franciscans loved her.
The show's lead producer, Marc Platt, who also produced "Wicked," said he'd been drawn to both shows because while they include romance, their main focus is really on the outsider, "the single person wanting to belong." Scissorhands can't fit in; in "Wicked," "all Elphaba wants to do is be part of something." Think of MySpace coming to the stage.
And on that note, Laura Albert, a.k.a. JT LeRoy, attended the opening, too, in a fashionably tattered Scissorhands-ish gown. Did that outsider theme have resonance with her alter ego's adventures in rock-lit celebrityland? "Oh, I relate," she said, so enthusiastically she made a little hop. At the beginning of Andy Warhol's career, she said, "people were terrified of him. ... Now Warhol is on children's pajamas." "So would you like to be on children's pajamas?" I asked. "I wear children's pajamas," she said.
"Did you get the mint? Did you get the mint?"
San Francisco firefighter to fellow firefighter, overheard in the Rainbow Grocery by Margie Bender.