Will there be Redemption?

While the world is still reeling from sexual harassment accusations about Hollywood movie stars and producers, two events in New York illustrate how things may eventually end up.

Whisper's spy in the Big Apple and Hollywood disguised as Aspidistra plant in several upmarket venues spotted some interesting faces out and about recently.
Making his first appearance at a prestige NY event (according to those in the know) was Kevin Spacey accuser, actor Anthony Rapp who sang 2 songs from the musical Rent at the Harboring Hearts annual gala to raise funds for cardiac research.

Anthony Rapp (second left) and pals at the Harboring Hearts fundraiser.

Just days later a magnificent fundraiser was held at Hearst Castle in California the magnificent home built by the legendary US newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. Our exclusive photos from the event give some idea of this splendorous home where Hearst threw some of the most amazing parties during the 1940s and '50s. When he died in 1957 he left the castle to the California state so the exquisite collection of antiques and art can be preserved and viewed by the public. Each year the Hearst Castle Preservation Society holds a shindig to raise funds and promote the estate.

Apart from the cream of LA society naturally there are numerous Hearst family members on hand and the above snap caught our attention. It's Patricia Hearst Shaw (above left) with Suzanne Tucker, and Wendy Stark.
Perhaps older readers may recall the extraordinary events of 1974 when Patricia, the grand-daughter of Randolph Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left wing revolutionary group. 

While police searched for the kidnapped heiress, suddenly she began appearing in a number of banks participating in bank hold-ups wielding a sub machine gun helping to raise funds for her captors.

Hearst was eventually arrested and jailed for 7 years and finally pardoned by President Bill Clinton. Now she's a regular again on the social circuit. 

Will Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein et all have to wait that long?

Below: some more snaps from the Hearst Castle bash.

The Inspiration for Kevin Spacey's New Hair

The UK Daily Mail newspaper has run a story with some pictures of actor Kevin Spacey's gorgeous new hair which he premiered at the Australian Open yesterday in Melbourne.
 Kevin watched enthralled along with the nation as tennis greats Andy Murray and Roger Federer battled it out.

But as always the Shuttle is ahead of the others and today we present the man who inspired Kevin to banish those grey wisps and give his scalp a complete make-over : brother Randy Fowler who as our snap shows has one of the most magnificent manes seen around Las Vegas where he lives, shepherding folk around town in his luxury limo service and enthralling audiences with his Rod Stewart impersonations.
Sadly the two show-biz brothers are estranged and Randy once said to  Britain's Daily Mirror in an interview about Kevin : My brother is a lying weirdo !

Madame Arcati Scoops the World-by 12 months

It was exactly 12 months ago that the famed British blogger Madame Arcati drew our attention to an interview with the wife of the Syrian president,  Asma al-Assad in US Vogue, declaring it in bad taste as demonstrating Syrians were being massacred by security forces. Shortly after the Arcati story, the article disappeared from Vogue's website.:
                                  
 "Vogue keeps up Asma al-Assad interview as Syria burns

While the Syrian government massacres its revolting peasants, I see that US Vogue has still yet to take down its recent ghastly and fawning interview with Asma al-Assad, Syria's 'dynamic first lady' who is on a 'mission to create a beacon of culture and secularism.' She should import the BBC's resident proselytising atheist Prof Brian Cox to help her out."

                                                                                           

Now the fabled Washington Post has just caught up to speed, 12 months after Madame Arcati's scoop.
Read the story as re-produced in the Sydney Morning Herald here and Madame Arcati's original posts here
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 Two days ago we asked who was the famous brother of the person in the snap we published.
The answer was Kevin Spacey.

 The pic was of his older brother Randy Fowler who runs the Rod's Limo Hire company in Boise Idaho.
You can see the family resemblence-can't you? :

What Have We Done To Kevin Spacey?

Following our story on Bob Carr's attack on Kevin Spacey's Richard 111 performance  in Sydney, and our follow-up tale on the British blogger Madame Arcati who had become embroiled in a Spacey family spat and been subsequently banned by Spacey from his Twitter account, the "former shoe salesman now making a go at film and theater. Wish me luck..." (Kevin's description of himself)  Oscar winning actor has gone into meltdown and suspended his Twitter account.

Spacey tweeted the following message : "“Unless Twitter implements better ways to stop harassment and stalkers, my account will stay locked,” 
and subsequently : “If this doesn’t work then I may deactivate my account and suggest that others do as well.” 

Yesterday the following appeared and Spacey locked out his 2,223,091 followers  
@kevinspacey's Tweets are protected.  
Only confirmed followers have access to @kevinspacey's Tweets and complete profile. You need to send a request before you can start following this account.

Has the curse of Madame Arcati struck again ?

Kevin Spacey, Madame Arcati : An Obesession With Penises

Kevin Spacey’s Richard III closed last night after a triumphant  run at the Lyric Theatre with Spacey receiving standing ovations. After the final performance Spacey shared champagne with billionaire Paul Ramsay who had forked out a $200,000 donation to the Kevin Spacey Foundation for a pair of tickets and another 100 grand for a game of tennis with the actor.

One theatre patron who wasn’t too taken with Spacey’s acting or the Sam Mendes production was former NSW premier Bob Carr who walked out of the play at interval and ripped into the Hollywood star's performance on his blog Thought Lines. 

Another who is probably not on Spacey’s Christmas card list is the famous British blogger Madame Arcati who has finally hung up her bicycle clips. Madame announced a week ago that her four year run was at an end.

Arcati has delighted, amused and horrified readers in equal doses but it was when she ignited a family feud amongst the Spacey family that her readership went through the roof.

Madame interviewed Spacey’s brother Randy Fowler in 2008. Randy had written a book Spacey’s Brother: Out of the Closet  in which he revealed that as a child he was regularly raped by his father who was was obsessed with pornography, was anti-Semitic and a member of the American Nazi Party.

Then Randy’s ex-wife Stephanie Mastini contacted Aracti bemoaning Spacey's superiority complex and claimed Randy was being ignored by his famous sibling.

Randy

Stephanie

Over the next two years matters degenerated into a family squabble with Stephanie’s sister Francine Mastini entering the fray calling her sibling Madame Batshit.

Finally Randy Fowler returned fire blaming Madame Arcati for all the fuss and accused all and sundry of trying to out his Oscar winning brother as gay.

There had already been much snickering about Spacey-who is the current artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre in London-after he was mugged in a London park at 4.30am by a young man who stole his mobile phone. (The incident brought back memories of the legendary BBC correspondent Sir Robin Day who had  been similarly mugged in Holland Park Walk whilst taking a constitutional walk. Day said at the time he had no idea the Walk was a gay beat even though he had lived nearby for 20 years.)

Soon Randy's ghost writer Jack Ewing chipped in and not to be left out, Spacey's biographer 

Randy Tamblyn had a few words to say as well.

The outcome was a rash of twitter bannings by Spacey with Madame Arcati and Stephanie being consigned to the sin bin where they have probably been joined by Bob Carr.

The penises ?. The man who is reputedly the mastermind behind the Madame Aracti blog  Victor Olliver has fled to the gentler world of Astrology and has become resident star gazer for the famous publication The Lady, Britain's oldest published magazine. 

Editor of The Lady, Rachel Johnson (sister of London's Lord Mayor Boris Johnson) has just resigned with dreadful timing to join the PR fixers Bell Pottinger.

The magazine's publisher Julia Budworth once accused Johnson of being "obsessed with penises".

Bob Carr Savages Kevin Spacey

The critics have loved his performance but former NSW premier turned art critic Bob Carr has walked out of Kevin Spacey’s Richard 11 during interval.

Writing on his Thoughtlines website Carr says:

Bob Carr loonpond.blogspot.com

“If you like Shakespeare, don’t see this. If you liked Kevin Spacey in American Beauty (1999) don’t see this. If you like the fun of Shakespeare’s villain Richard, Duke of Gloucester, don’t see it.”

Ouch!. But there’s more: "Spacey plays the cheapest and most obvious laughs, as if entertaining a school-age audience “The crude over-acting by him and his colleagues was reflected in too many shouted lines. Words are lost in the upper registers. Resonance and enunciation are thrown away and Shakespeare’s words go missing”

Wagner enthusiast Carr wasn’t too keen on Derek Jacobi’s Lear either despite the production receiving high praise from The Guardian and UK Telegraph.

" I, however, found it distinctly unmoving."

Even the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Antony and Cleopatra comes in for a pasting from Bob

" With inadequate voices (that is, inadequate for these roles) from Kathryn Hunter and Darrell D’Silva I found myself consulting the paperback text on my knee when I could."

And in the comments section our Bob  rips into those who disagree.

Derek Jacobi in Lear

Brendan W says " I do so love the implication that by enjoying the Spacey version of Richard III that I am somehow dumb….Of the two plays I saw this past weekend (Gross Und Klein and Richard III) I only enjoyed one, but was treated to spectacular, albeit very different, performances on both occasion"

Bob puts Brendan in his place: " You have seen TWO professionally-performed Shakespeare and declare that one was the “definitive”? When you have gone to the UK and seen productions by the RSC and The National Theatre come back and engage."

Bob is a famous Civil War enthusiast which possibly explains his support for the disastrous Iraq war but he once managed to wangle a forward for his book out of Gore Vidal, an anti-Iraq invasion exponent.

He was premier for 10 years before suddenly resigning in 2005 and fleeing to the sheltered workshop for those with political contacts –the Macquarie Bank also known as the Millionaires Factory. 

                

Many said he was the ‘best premier the Conservatives never had” who stuffed Sydney’s public transport, slashed legal aid and injury compensation and engaged in an unholy alliance with News Ltd tabloids on phony Law & Order auctions, eventually making it difficult for many to get bail which filled the jails.

Bob  fled with perfect timing as three successive Labor premiers tried to hold together the shambles left behind only to be turfed from office in a massive landslide to the Coalition last March.

Currently he’s lecturing the State and Federal Labour Parties on how to succeed but it's nice to know his lavish state pension and merchant bank sinecure keep him theatre tickets.

Recently Bob poured scorn on  the Occupy Movement saying the “greedy incompetents on Wall Street” will be tamed by “parliamentary politics”.

The Macquarie Bank is one of the largest and most successful private banks on the planet with extensive dealings on Wall Street. The CEO received a $33M payment last year. With Carr at the Macquarie the amount of government contracts worth billions that flowed into Macquarie while Labor was still in power may have been pure co-incidence.

Maybe Bob's role in the Millionaire's Factory is to 'tame' them We live in hope.

Kevin Spacey Wins Big Time

Paul Ramsay

He's received rave reviews for his Richard III at the Lyric Theatre and  now actor Kevin Spacey has won over billionaire Paul Ramsay who parted with $200,000 for a pair of tickets for the closing night next Sunday with champagne after with Spacey. Ramsay also bid $100,000 at auction to play tennis for an hour with the Hollywood star.

Ramsay was at a Spacey's charity dinner at Justin Hemmes' Est Restaurant last week which raised $350,000 for the Kevin Spacey Foundation that supports young actors, directors, producers and writers in film and theatre.

Bachelor Ramsay, worth $1.5Billion with his nursing home empire and Prime Media which operates regional TV stations was a close friend of the late Johnny Baker who died last year.
When the pair met about 30 years ago Bakes said to Ramsay "I've got the contacts and you have the cash,we should travel together". 

Lady Sonia & Baker

And so they did every year with Ramsay funding lavish holidays around the world whenever Baker wasn't also accompanying the late Kerry Packer who loved to take Bakes on his private jet to keep him amused. Paul was also a pal of Lady Sonia McMahon who died shortly after Baker and he felt the loss of both friends deeply. Perhaps he has now formed a new bond with Spacey. They do have mutual interests.
Host of the dinner Justin Hemmes parted with $21,000 for harbour cruise for 20 and to play ping pong with Spacey

Next week : our exclusive on the London blogger who started  a Spacey Family Feud !

Below is a video of Spacey talking about his foundation;