Matt Smith, a Brit, played against Claire Foy as the current British Majesty’s husband Philip in “The Crown.” He now plays Robert Mapplethorpe, who made homoerotic photos of the ’70s. He’s gone from Buckingham Palace to the Chelsea Hotel.
Must be the season for handsome men — Smith, Matthew McConaughey (in “Serenity”) — to film their naked bones. Erotic, iconic, sexual, S&M, frontal, rear-endal, penis close-ups were in this movie. Especially timely being the showing was Valentine’s Day.
Matt, in black suit, brown shoes: “We did this in 19 days everywhere in New York. I love this town, but it was hard to film. The character was unflinching, uncompromising. Photo-happy, he had a total fascination in achieving what his head believed.”
Then: “The film is interesting.” Yeah, right.
Interviewer Bob Colacello: “I met Mapplethorpe in those days. I wrote for Interview, the first magazine to publish him. Robert, going both ways, was getting his nipple pierced. When I joined the Village Voice, he called. Very ambitious, he wanted only to meet Andy Warhol.
“His taxi bill once was $50. He didn’t have that. For $50, he’d have eaten for a whole month, so we gave him the money. When he began to do sadomasochistic pictures, he became famous. Balancing that S&M with flowers, he’d say, ‘Well, I like flowers.’
“An East 57th gallery started showing his work but never thought he’d become so big. Last year, LA mounted a double exhibit for him. The money went to the Mapplethorpe Foundation.”
Matt said little. His jacket still bore the telltale white thread that tailors sew in back to protect the thing’s rear flap while it hangs in the store. Nobody seemed to have mentioned this to their star. Marianne Rendón, who posed with him at the screening, stars as Patti Smith.
On-screen Matt cavorts with gentlemen. Off-screen he and girlfriend Lily James recently cavorted in Ischia’s Hotel Regina Isabella, where Elizabeth Taylor and Burton once did their own cavorting until one night came a fight and E. Taylor flung all R. Burton’s clothes over the balcony into the pool.
Smith and James appeared to have had a cavortier visit.
While this memory in no way helps the movie, it does at least help show that I know other things.
Pols should learn to eat
Recall de Blasio inhaling a pizza slice with knife and fork like some foreigner from some far away Colorado or someplace?
Comes now Kirsten Gillibrand on the road to presidential immortality. In some waythehell whoknows state, served Southern fried chicken, she grabbed a knife and fork. Staffers, greasy up to their elbows, gave her the evil eye.
The candidate dumped the cutlery then properly attacked a chicken leg with fingers.
Please . . . before governing . . . candidates must matriculate in eating!
Jacko Prints
Coming is photographer Harry Benson’s limited (1,500 copies) edition of publisher Taschen’s oversize coffee table book “Michael Jackson 1984-1997.” It includes three fine art MJ prints so you choose which you like. Harry’s wife, Gigi: “In the galleys Michael’s photo got flipped. Glove on his wrong hand. We fixed it.”
Please try to pay attention
At 21, Jimmy Fallon telling jokes to tables before sitting for dinner . . . CBS documentary on Pavarotti coming soon . . . DUMPING the wife then dumped from NY, Bezos’ newly acquired, albeit slightly used merchandise, now must lie on an out-of-town shelf. Until her sell-by date.
“I know an artist who paints a new picture every five days and thinks nothing of it. Neither does anyone else.”
Said only in New York, kids, only in New York.