A French Honour

Brian * Emile * and Gene Sherman

Gene Sherman owns the up-market Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Gallery in Paddington. Now for the second time she has been honoured by the French government for her contribution to the arts and culture presented at a small cocktail party as our snap above shows.
Pinning on the medal is France's Ambassador to Australia, His Excellency Monsieur Christophe Lecourtier.

And watching were some proud family members - husband Brian and son Emile. Brian Sherman who sold his investment company for $$mega-millions now concentrates on his charity Voiceless started by he and his daughter Ondine which raises awareness of animals suffering in factory farming and the kangaroo industry in Australia.
 Emile Sherman is probably best known as the producer of the 2011 Academy Award winning film The King's Speech. Currently he's working on several TV series : Love Nina and Codes of Conduct, a science fiction film How To Talk to Girls at Parties starring Nicole Kidman and a re-make of the Lynda la Plante Widows starring Viola Davis.
And if you haven't been to the wonderful Sherman Gallery you'll find it at 16-29 Goodhope Street, just off Five Ways in Paddington.

Meet Sid The Camel

It's become one of Sydney's favourite January events- the annual opening of the St George open air cinema by the harbour at Mrs Macquarie's Chair. Fine food and wine, a sea breeze, an incomparable location and always a latest release.
pictured left : Robyn Davidson & Mia Wasikowska with Sid the camel



This year's offering is Tracks, an adaptation of Robyn Davidson's memoir of the same name, chronicling the author's nine-month journey on camels across the Australian desert.
Directed by John Curran and staring the very lovely Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Tovey and Adam Driver.

Robyn Davidson was there as was the film's producer Emile Sherman who picked up an Oscar for The King's Speech.      right : Jessica Tovey

Robyn Davidson, Jessica Tovey,Mia Wasikowska, Emile Sherman and Caroline Sherman

Celeb Sightings in Sydney

Olivia, hubby John Esterling, Delta Goodren at the Downs Syndrome fundraiser

An unusually busy Sydney wet weekend with a charity ball, the finale of the Sydney Film Festival at the State Theatre and new superstar Chris Hemsworth taking a day off to surf at Maroubra Beach before the launch of his film Snow White and The Huntsman this Tuesday at Westfield in Bondi Junction.

Our favourite Academy Award types were at the State Theatre including Oscar winner Emile Sherman (producer of The King's Speech), nominee Jackie Weaver and Hugo Weaving. 

Emile Sherman

Hugo Weaving

Still celebrating his 25 years on TV, celeb interviewer Richard Wilkins hosted the 25 Year Anniversary Fundraiser for Downs Syndrome at Fox Studios and that brought out Hollywood types like Nicole Kidman and Olivia Newton John plus the judges from The Voice-Seal, Delta Goodren, Keith Urban and Joel Madden (they sang for their supper). 
Meanwhile Lady GaGa jetted in from Melbourne and did a walk about outside the Park Hyatt Hotel greeting a few hundred excited Little Monsters and posed for snaps with them.

major Hollywood eye candy at Maroubra Beach yesterday

And that's just the weekend!

Archibald Still Pleases

The Archibald Portrait prize never fails to shock and delight, always with a tinge of controversy. This year's recipient was Bathurst artist Tim Storrier with his self portrait (minus head): The histrionic wayfarer (after Bosch) .

Lucky Tim-for the first time the prize was raised to $75,000 although that's a fraction of the price he receives for a painting.

Above is Adam Cheng's portrait of film producer Emile Sherman who picked up an Oscar for The King's Voice.

The launch was also an opportunity to meet the new News South Wales Art Gallery director Michael Brand who will take over from Edmund Capon in June. Brand is the current director of the Aga Khan Museum which is being built in Toronto and formerly the J.Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Below are some of the finalists:

(left) Martin Sharp's painting
 'the thousand dollar bill'

and right: Garry Shead's 'Martin Sharp and 
his magic theatre'

Adam Cullen's 'Nelson & Koko'

 right : Michael Vale's 'Night of the wolverine – a portrait of Dave Graney and Clare Moore' 

Speaking Up For The Voiceless

Ondine Sherman & Sarah Ferguson

When the ABC TV's  Four Corners program screened A Bloody Business in March this year the political and public backlash was deafening. The images of the cruel treatment Australian cattle received in Indonesian abattoirs generated overwhelming public outcry and the temporary suspension of the trade with Indonesia.

The reaction was just what the organisation Voiceless, the animal protection institute would expect as they attempt to get the message across of how unethically animals are treated by humans. But Voiceless don't preach, they just present the evidence and allow you to decide.

Sadly the evidence overwhelmingly proves that we humans are unnecessarily cruel to other life forms that we share the planet with. And it doesn't have to be that way.

Gemma Davis & Jessica Gomez

Voiceless is the brainchild of the well known Sydney family of Shermans and in particularly Ondine Sherman who discovered at an early age, that the meat she was eating came from an animal,. She turned Vegan and gradually the entire family, dad Brian, mother Jean and brother Emile Sherman followed suit. (Everyone knows Emile Sherman now-ever since he stepped up to the stage at the 2011 Academy Awards to accept an Oscar for his production of The King's Speech.)

Caroline & Emile Sherman

In their third year, the  Voiceless Awards are handed out to those who  have advanced the cause to end animal suffering, overseen by a judging panel chaired by Nobel Prize Laureate J M Coetze.

This year at the Blue Hotel in Woolloomooloo the reporter on A Bloody Business Sarah Ferguson and producer Michael Doyle won $5,000 in the broadcast category of the Voiceless Media Prize. Other winners: Christine Jackman for her article, The claws come out  in the Weekend Australian Magazine, broadcaster Caro Meldrum-Hanna for “Bad Egg” which aired on 7.30 NSW about the Australian Egg Corporation on its proposal to allow 20,000 hens per hectare and Cheryl Balfour for a series of articles about the Eden Park kangaroo cull published in the Whittlesea Leader between December 2010 and October 2011.
A Bloody Business can be viewed here (VIEWER WARNING: Contains images which
may distress some viewers)
 The Voiceless website is here and contains a lot of evidence and information on cruelty to animals. 

Finally : Why Cranky Frankie Spat The Dummy

Frank & Barbara

It was 1973 and Frank Sinatra had arrived in Australia for a tour. Within a day all hell had broken loose and Frank suddenly found himself holed up in the presidential suite of the Boulevard Hotel in Kings Cross.

Unions around the country had joined forces and refused to service Sinatra's tour which included stage hands and local musicians.  Airline refuelers refused to service Sinatra's jet and traffic controllers said they would walk off if his jet attempted to leave . Taxi drivers. limousine drivers even the hotel staff including room service refused to attend to Sinatra's needs.

Dennis Hopper as Sinatra

Frank Sinatra was stranded in Australia for the foreseeable future. 

The previous night Sinatra had given a concert and began to discuss the Australian media with the audience. He called female reporters "$2 hookers" and that's when the ban began. The incident was made into a film - The Night We Called It a Day produced by Oscar winner Emile Sherman with the late Dennis Hopper playing Sinatra and Joel Edgerton the young show biz promoter who lured him to the Antipodes.

Bob Hawke

Eventually the trade union boss and later prime minister Bob Hawke brokered a deal after a day's drinking with Sinatra and his manager Mickey Rudin (with the Boulevard's room service attendants relenting to deliver liqueur at Hawke's request). Sinatra agreed to give a charity concert and apologise. He gave the concert but not the apology and when his jet taxied down the Mascot runway the following day traffic controllers ordered "abort abort" but Sinatra ordered his pilot to ignore them and the jet departed for San Francisco.

Sinatra's widow Barbara Sinatra ( played by Melanie Griffith in the film) has finally told her version of the story in her book My Life With Frank Sinatra and  revealed new details although they have been hinted at for years but never before written about.. And it appears Frank may have had good reason to insult journalists.

A female writer for a popular magazine  talked hotel staff into letting her into Sinatra's suite claiming she was Barbara Sinatra. She confronted Sinatra in his bedroom while he was resting and fired off numerous questions while trying to take a photo on a small camera. Sinatra went ballistic and yelled at her to get out of the room.

As the journalist later told friends he said "I didn't order a fucking hooker and if I had it wouldn't be a dog like you now get the fuck out of here ". The hackette said "you may as well answer a few questions now I'm here" at which Sinatra yelled "you're nothing but a godadammned cheap hooker" and flung some notes from his pocket at her. The journalist, now realising retreat was the only option grabbed one note as a souvenir-an Australian $2 note-briefly wondered if he would autograph it but thinking better of it, stuffed it in her pocket and fled.

That night she witnessed the storm she created when Frankie went on stage and referred to her (and others) as "$2 hookers!"

Here is some rare footage of the media chasing Frank :


Here's Old Blue Eyes with The Lady Is A Tramp :

'Extremists' We Like

Brian Sherman & daughter Ondine with a friendly Kangaroo
courtesy Voiceless

The billionaire Brian Sherman last week hit back at the Shooters & Fisher's Party MP Robert Borsack who claimed in the NSW Parliament on May 11th that Sherman's Voiceless was an "extremist animal rights group".

On it's website Voiceless says: “Voiceless will bring the institutionalised suffering of animals to the forefront of Australia’s agenda; ensuring that animal protection is the next great social justice movement.” 

 Borsack says that Voiceless was one of many 'extremist' groups attempting to buy credibility at Universities and other teaching bodies. Sherman is a well known philanthropist who donates millions of dollars with no strings attached to education bodies throughout Australia.

He is also a dedicated animal right's activist and a vegan who wears or uses no animal products that have been produced through animal suffering.

The Shooters and Fishers Party with just 2 state MPs also thinks The Greens are an extremist party despite The Greens now holding the balance of power federally with 9 senators, 5 NSW upper house MPs and one in the lower house.

MP Robert Borsack & the elephant he shot in 2008
 www.wildhunts.co.nz

Borsack who proudly tells anyone who will listen of how he slaughtered an elephant while on safari in Zimbabwe in 2008 basically wants everyone to be free to blast away at any living creature while rampaging through state forests in 4 wheel drives.

Brian Sherman started Voiceless with his daughter Ondine in 2004 to raise awareness of the suffering of animals.

It's fair to say the writer AA Gill who is in town at present wouldn't have received an invite to the fundraiser  Sherman hosted last week-Voices of Art 2: An Evening Of Art For Animals. AA Gill infamously shot a baboon last year because he wanted to see how it felt to kill.

And who were amongst the extremists at the Voiceless fundraiser ?. Noted Japanese designer Akira Isogawa, prominent artist Adam Chang, one of the world's most respected neurosurgeons, the brilliant Dr  Charlie Teo (Isogawa and Teo are Voiceless board members) Brian's son Emile Sherman who just picked up an Oscar at the Academy Awards in  Hollywood for his production- The King's Voice  ( he thanked his mother & father from the stage) Emile's mum Gene who runs the superb Sherman Gallery in Paddington and Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Edmund Capon, director of the NSW Art Gallery.

Don't miss tonight's Australian Story Hearts Of Gold: 23rd May 2011, 8pm which features the prodigiously talented Sherman family and their great passion for animals.
You can catch the show later on the ABC's Iview.

Will Oscar Be Kind to Emile ?




Emile Sherman (second left) collects a Bafta for The Kings Speech

 

While the hopes of locals are centred on Geoffrey Rush and Jackie Weaver at today's Academy Awards event, one family is hoping The King's Speech comes up trumps for their boy.

Emile Sherman produced the film and was behind a number of Australian films many of which sank from the box office without trace. While Rabbit Proof Fence did well in the European markets, others like $9.99, Candy, The Kings of Mykonos went straight to video after a short theatrical release.

The disastrous The Night We Called it A Day which starred Dennis Hopper as Frank Sinatra and was based on a real life incidence when Cranky Franky was holed up in a Sydney hotel unable to leave after unions put a blanket ban on his movements when he publicly insulted female journalists, was a major box office bomb.

Sherman is the son of noted Sydney philanthropists Brian and Gene Sherman and Emile runs his production office out of mum Gene's Sherman art gallery in Paddington.



Emile's parents- Gene & Brian Sherman



The family are all vegetarians, a trend begun by sister Ondine when she discovered at age 8 that meat came from animals. She refused point blank  to ever eat it again and the family soon followed suit.

Brian Sherman who sold his Equitlink, the biggest private investment company in Australia for billions of dollars  in 2000 now concentrates on charitable ventures and in particular animal causes. He donates millions of dollars to Animal Liberation.

Brian, Gene and Ondine will be watching this morning to see if Emile makes that winning walk to the Oscar's stage.

                                        ********************************
Stop Press : the whoops of joy emanating from the Sherman Galleries in Paddington could be heard from streets away this afternoon as a small family gathering watched the Academy Awards  as Emile Sherman proudly collected an Oscar for The King's Speech.

5 Australians collected Oscars and it's a toss up whether director Tom Hooper should be regarded as one-he collected an award for Best Film with The King's Speech -he's a dual citizen with an Australian mother -who, as in the tale he recounted at the ceremoney was the inspiration behind the film.