Schnabel Schmacks Down DocumentarianFilmmaker Paul H-O gets told off by growling angry Papa Bear Julian Schnabel — in his own documentary. In your face, H-O! Now you know never to cross the Schnabe!
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In Which We Are Schtartled by a Schmoking SchnabelThe other night at the opening of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s photo exhibition, “Merce My Way,” at 401 Projects on West Street, we were ruminating on the rapidly changing schneigborhood with gallery owner Mark Seliger. “You just blink and there’s a new building up,” said Seliger, adding that he is often asked to sell his building, just south of the Richard Meier condos. He wasn’t entirely sold on Julian Schnabel’s nearby Palazzo Chupi, he admitted, at least not until he went inside. “It’s amazing,” he declared. “It’s growing on me, definitely growing on me.” Another local, Michael Angelo, proprietor of supermodel-central salon Wonderland on West 13th Street, chimed in. “I think that everybody had a little heart attack at first,” he said of the pink palazzo.
Seliger recently photographed the entire Schnabel family for a L’Uomo Vogue spread. Papa Schnab, he said, had insisted on wearing his own clothing. “You can count on him wearing pajamas, that’s for sure,” he said.
And then, as if he were a rotund, benevolent Beetlejuice, at the sound of his name, Schnabel appeared.
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Citigroup Trader Andrew J. Hall Has Castle, Is SchnabulousEvery once in a while, The Wall Street Journal renews our faith in the Street and, indeed, humanity by profiling one of the few eccentric and wonderful folks who float among or above the wretched, amoral meatheads, and Andrew J. Hall is such a man. The British-born commodities trader and head of a “secretive unit” at Citigroup known as Phibro, 57-year-old Hall has made a killing in the last few years off long-term oil futures, the Journal tells us, and this is despite the fact that, most afternoons, he leaves the office to row or practice calisthenics with a ballet teacher. He’s also one of the world’s top collectors of contemporary art — not that his neighbors in Southport, Connecticut, were particularly impressed by that when he tried to install an 80-foot-long concrete sculpture on the lawn of his Greek Revival home. Hall ended up giving Etroits sont les Vaisseaux to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which is too bad because it would have looked nice on the lawn at Schloss Dernberg, the nearly 1,000-year-old castle he owns in Germany. But his material possessions aren’t the only reason we would like Hall to procure the necessary papers to adult-adopt us. According to the Journal, “He recently staged a lavish exhibit in his German castle of works by U.S. artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel.” In the book accompanying the show, Hall opined that “many in the art world have tried to ignore” Mr. Schnabel, despite his obvious awesomeness. See? He’s a man after our own heart.
Trader Hits Jackpot in Oil, As Commodity Boom Roars On [WSJ]
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Schnabel: He’ll Always Be a Schwinner to UsAs you probably know, Julian Schnabel did not win an Oscar for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last night. In fact, he lost, to the bespectacled directors of a movie with “few sympathetic characters, brutal, unredeemable violence, and an ending in which the closest thing the story has to a protagonist is killed offstage.” The disappointment on Schnabel’s face when the verdict was issued was difficult for us to bear, even as it quickly turned to annoyance. Clearly, this was a political, polemical conspiracy, you could see him thinking. Javier Bardem! That hair! Gimmicky. But what did it mean? Does it mean that the world at large will never recognize Schnabel’s true magnificence? This we cannot believe. Though we are bowed by this defeat, we are not broken. The Schnabe comes from a long line of stout, hairy, strong souls, and he will emerge again, like, yes, a butterfly from a pupa. Until then, Schnabel, we Schalute thee.
Related: Julian Schnabel is My Cousin [Consent of the Governed]
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Madonna Explains Why She Schnubbed the ChupiBecause Daily Intel’s pursuit of all things Schnabel is not bound by geography or actually, gravity, we asked Berlin-based reporter Lawrence Ferber to corner Madonna at the Berlin Film Festival this week, where she was promoting the film she directed, Filth and Wisdom, and ask her why she had rejected the Chupi of our dreams. Here is his report:
“What a strange question!” Madonna laughed when we asked her about the Palazzo Chupi. So we laughed too, like “Ha-ha-ha-ha, we’re not psycho.” “How did you know that?” she asked. Er, we have our ways. Madge confirmed she had looked at the Chupi and decided not to move in. But not, it turned out, for fear of seeing a Schnaked Schnabel slipping into the swimming pool. “I love the house,” she explained. “But it’s not child-friendly, which is why I didn’t end up moving there.” Also, she was able to iron out the issues she was having with her co-op board at Harperly Hall. I bought the apartment upstairs, so now everything’s A-OK,” she said. She and Schnabel will continue to be friends. “I love [Julian],” she gushed. “He’s awesome.” We think so too! Maybe we can all be friends! Madge? —Lawrence Ferber
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Palazzo Chupi Goes on the Market; Intel Editors SchwoonThis may be hard for you to believe since we at Intel are clearly deeply fulfilled by our work, but there are days when we say to ourselves, Selves? Why did we not go into investment banking? Because a life of pounding the pavement and speaking truth to power may be noble, but it’s not gonna get us to the Palazzo Chupi. Yes, today the remaining two units of Julian Schnabel’s pink West Village Palace, having been rejected by Bono, then by Madonna, went on the market. The views (river and harbor, from various terraces), amenities (pool, parking, access to the Schnabe), and schnabulous details (cast-bronze door handles, stone fireplaces, cast-stone railings, beamed ceilings, terra-cotta tile floors) put the price at $27 million (for the duplex) and $32 million (for the triplex). Our rudimentary math skills (another reason we’re not bankers) indicate that it will take us somewhere between 400 and 700 years to save up for our chunk of Chupi. Until then, we can only dream, and moon over the pictures after the jump.
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Julian Schnabel to Bring Peace to the Middle EastAdd selfless and noble to the list of things we love about Julian Schnabel. The Schnab is going to Israel in June, partly to scout locations for a movie based on a book by Israeli-Palestinian author Rula Jebreal, but also to be an envoy of peace. “We need to fix things over there,” Schnabel told an Israeli reporter in London the other day. “I’m going to work on it. That will be my next thing. Yes, I’m going to devote myself to try and make things better over there.” So what if he gets sidetracked a little? “Are there any surfers in Israel?” he asks the interviewer. If there’s anyone who can bring peace to that war-torn part of the world, it’s a ruddy, pajama-clad painter from New York City by way of Brownsville, Texas. Or, at least, you know, it won’t be as bad as when Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown went.
Next Direction: Paint It Peaceful [NYP via The Reeler]
The Diving Bell Director Coming to Israel [YNet]
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Julian Schnabel Attacked by Feral BloggerSo Julian Schnabel had a little outburst on Monday at the Oscar-nominees’ luncheon, wherein he said to the Los Angeles Times, “It’s interesting to be nominated for Best Direction, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, but not Best Picture. I don’t know what else you have to do to make a picture.” Obviously, we, as dedicated Schnabelites, find this quip charming and endearing and, frankly, quite right, but Vanity Fair Oscar blogger S.T. VanAirsdale was not amused. He called the Schnab’s remarks “ungracious” and the man himself “thin-skinned,” and then gloated about how Schnabel actually did get sort of shafted by the Academy and how “it’s okay to pity him” even though he’s so, like, difficult. Now, we don’t know who or what this S.T. VanAirsdale is — we imagine this little rant being written by a prize-winning terrier — but this will not stand. Clearly, VanAirsdale has not been so fortunate as to receive a Schnug from the Diving Bell and the Butterfly director, but has he ever seen the man? Schnabel is not thin, -skinned or otherwise. He is sensitive and Schnabulous, and he does not need anyone’s pity, okay? God.
Little Gold Men [VF via Carpetbagger/NYT]
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Julian Schnabel Gives Us a SchnugSince his Diving Bell and the Butterfly was released to wide critical acclaim and he received a Best Director Oscar nomination nod, Julian Schnabel has been basking in adulation like a seal in the afternoon sun. Much of the attention has come from us at Intel, who find everything about Schnabel, from his irascible braggadocio to his pajamas to his frontal and dorsal man-fur, extremely compelling. But other people love El Schnabuloso, too, like Lou Reed, who mentioned his longtime friend and neighbor’s “big old heart,” when he introduced him as an honoree at the amFar awards last night. But how big was that heart, and was there room in there for us? We sidled up to the Schnabel to try and find out.
