New film “Hands of Stone” doesn’t mention that Robert De Niro, playing boxer Roberto Durán’s trainer Ray Arcel, is Durán’s old friend. To play Jake LaMotta in 1980’s “Raging Bull,” who is one of the people De Niro consultanted? Also Durán.
Robert and Roberto hung out. Then, after winning his welterweight title against Sugar Ray Leonard, Durán plummeted. The film depicts him undisciplined. Understatement. The Mayflower Hotel guests hated Durán’s late-night partying. Entourage, drunken hangers-on, booze, women. Facing Leonard’s rematch, he’d come in 4 a.m., then head for a Central Park workout 6 a.m.
Durán then faced Sugar Ray and what happened was “No Más.”
The Mayflower’s then-manager Robert Shanley is writing a book about it.
Film fest is upon us!
The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces 25 films for its 54th New York Film Festival, Sept. 30 through Oct. 16.
Opening night is “Selma” director Ava DuVernay’s doc “The 13th.” It deals with the 13th Amendment, civil rights footage, archival film, political interviews, and USA’s inequality. To open with a documentary directed by a black woman makes two Film Society firsts.
The centerpiece is “20th Century Women.” Annette Bening plays a single mother raising her teenage son in a bohemian house shared by carpenter Billy Crudup, punk artist Greta Gerwig and rebellious Elle Fanning.
Closing night. “The Lost City of Z” encapsulates a search for a lost city deep in the Amazon that takes its toll. The wife’s Sienna Miller. Co-stars are Robert Pattinson and Tom Holland.
Tickets go on sale to nonmembers Sept. 11.
Stone’s throw hits real mark
In Oliver Stone’s “Snowden,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Edward Snowden. To play his photographer girlfriend Lindsay Mills, Shailene Woodley had only social-media posts and Lindsay’s own images. Three months into filming, they met.
“Damn, wish I’d met her sooner,” she said. “I’d have incorporated physical mannerisms. This might be the first time a movie’s made about an event happening in real time.”
Listeners say that she admitted discovering his existence only when the story broke. But it had an impact. She believes devices like iPhones provide ways to spy on people.
“I’m not technological, but with my first iPhone at 18 it was like, ‘Oh, bet they’ll record me on this’ or, ‘I bet people can see through this camera.’ You joke about Big Brother watching, but this was real life.”
Woodley actually wrote Oliver — not to audition for a role — but to say, “Thank you for making this movie.”
She says: “Half the people never heard Snowden’s name before. Some believe he’s a traitor. Some, a hero. Everyone has strong opinions about a man we actually know nothing about.”
In asylum in Russia, Snowden’s pending fate might come to a head after our presidential elections end.
Liqueur heir and a saint
After a life of luxury Cointreau liqueur’s Tony Cointreau volunteered for 12 years in Mother Teresa’s Calcutta hospice. Washed floors, sang to patients, tended the dying. Sunday, Mother Teresa’s set for sainthood.
Sept. 6, Tony’s book “A Gift of Love: Lessons Learned From My Work and Friendship With Mother Teresa” gets published.
Rumor: Home Shopping Network might merge with C-SPAN. This way you can buy a politician in the privacy of your own home.
It’d be on everywhere, but it still feels like, only in New York, kids, only in New York.