Teenage is as rebellious a film as the territory it covers. Based on punk author Jon Savage ‘s 2007 book Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture 1875-1945 , Matt Wolf’s documentary eschews the talking heads and Chyroned dates that dominate the genre to immerse the moviegoer in a visually and aurally sumptuous history lesson. Wolf uses rare archival footage, period-piece recreations and a score by Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox to depict the evolution of teen culture via a number of influential and unconventional subcultures — swing kids, Boy Scouts, flappers, the German Wandervogel and even Nazi Youth — that coalesced from the late 19th century through the end of World War II. Understand them and today’s teens don’t seem so mystifying. I sat down with Wolf (he’s in the center of photo at left), Savage (he’s the one wearing orange pants) and the movie’s executive producer, actor Jason Schwartzman ( Moonrise Kingdom ) at the Tribeca Film Festival. Below is an edited version of our discussion: Movieline: Jason, how did you get to be the executive producer of Teenage ? Jason Schwartzman: When Matt’s movie about Arthur Russell came out, Wild Combination , I saw it multiple times in the course of a couple days, told everybody that I could possibly tell about it and showed it to one of my best friends Humberto Leon , who owns the fashion company Opening Ceremony . And when he saw that it was directed by Matt Wolf, he said, “Oh, Matt’s a really good friend of mine.” One thing led to another and Humberto connected Matt and I to make a short film for his store opening in Japan. We spent a lovely beautiful afternoon together in Toronto. It was just a beautiful day, and I felt instantly connected to Matt. I hope it’s okay that I say that. Matt Wolf: Please. Schwartzman: Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Wolf: No, I’m okay. Schwartzman: Too much pressure? After that, we started talking about books and music, and Matt said he was trying to make a documentary based on Jon Savage’s book Teenage . Being a fan of music and culture, I knew and loved Jon and was excited about this idea. And then a couple years later? Wolf: A year or two, I don’t know. Schwartzman: I reached out to Matt and said, “What’s going on with the movie? Is there anything I can try to do?” That began a process of getting the word out there and finding a way to finish the movie and make it happen. Movieline: You’ve taken a very unorthodox approach to making a non-fiction film. You call it “living collage.” Can you explain what you mean by that? Matt Wolf: When I read Jon’s book Teenage I didn’t just see it as source material. It helped me imagine a philosophy for the filmmaking. John is well known for his book on punk, England’s Dreaming , and in Teenage, he treated history in a punk way. Early on in our collaboration, he told me about something he observed in the 1970s: He saw these teenage punks wearing thrift clothes from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s and they would cut them up and reassemble them with safety pins into something new. He called that “living collage.” It really struck a chord with me and made me think, “Well what about living collage as a kind of filmmaking style, where we pick and choose these kind of documents and fragments from previous youth cultures and reassemble them into something that feels fresh and new.” And so living collage plays out visually in the way the film looks. In terms of the storytelling, the reason it probably feels unconventional is that, rather than telling the story with experts and historians, the film is told from the point of view of youth. And in John’s book, a huge basis of it is actual quotes from teenagers that are sourced from diaries and journalistic sources and books. And we kind of did a living collage of these quotes as well. You go so far as to not always identify who is talking. The moviegoer is essentially left to absorb what’s coming at him. Jon Savage: In an earlier edit we had lots of dates and times and Matt decided, and I thought it was a great idea, to actually take them out. Although it was good to have them, they were like the foundation. In any production, you have to start with a foundation and when the product is actually made, you don’t need [that foundation] any more. It’s not as if you need to explain Hitler Youth to a lot of people. It’s interesting that you say that because I thought the movie flowed like a piece of music — a punk symphony, you could say. Wolf: Yeah, that analogy makes sense to me, too. Music exists almost wall-to-wall through the film, and I perceive the voiceovers as being like lyrics. Very little of the archival footage we source has sound on it. . The voiceover is meant to provide a narrative foundation and to deepen the emotional impact of the film. It’s also meant to provide context in a personal way where it’s helpful. So kind of like lyrics in a song, you can just listen and hear it and have an emotional response to what you hear. Or that experience can be deepened by listening to the ideas in the lyrics. One of the first things I did when I started making this movie was to match archival footage to contemporary music that felt really transformational. It felt like a departure from how we normally see archival footage being used. How did you come to use Deer Hunter’s Bradford Cox to score the movie? Wolf: Bradford is my favorite contemporary musician, and we had actually corresponded as teenagers on an early blog that he ran. We reconnected over a music-themed film I made called Wild Combination years ago, and I approached him very early on in the process of Teenage to ask him if he’d like to score it. He wrote back saying, “Yes,” right away. But, like I said, the film is wall-to-wall music, and I’ve also included some pre-existing songs in the film as well. Savage: I gave Matt a hard drive. Wolf: Yeah, Jon gave me a lot of ideas for that music, too. I think our shared taste in music also was a helpful starting point. Jon, should someone who plans to see Teenage read your book before or after watching the movie? Savage: Whichever way, but, actually, I think the movie stands on its own. War plays an important role in this movie: On one hand, it’s responsible for the cross-pollination of teen cultures from around the world. On the other, it turns teens into adults very quickly. Wolf: It destroys them. At the beginning of this story, young people are perceived as a social problem. They need to be controlled. They’re sent to war and what happens to them in World War I is a kind of foundational trauma that creates teenage rebellion as we know it. It creates generational tension, and it drives the whole story. Then you have World War II, where young people are essentially sacrificed as cannon fodder by adults. But, at the same time, war stimulates the economy and enables teens to earn money and have a certain level of freedom. It’s as consumers that teenagers become the ultimate stakeholders in societies. War can lead to the destruction of their innocence, but it can also empower them with a certain level of freedom in terms of time and space and economics. War is the rear prism through which youth found their place in society. Savage: In our different ways, when I was doing the book and you were doing the film, we both fund the wartime stuff very hard. Wolf: Totally. I think the Hitler stuff is really intense. It’s at once totally intoxicating and absorbing. The reason Hitler and the Nazi experience for youth is a big part of the film is that Hitler both empowered and destroyed youth like no one else in history. In youth, he saw the potential to reimagine the world, but to very destructive and evil ends. It seems like every generation of adults laments how adventurous or promiscuous teens have become. But after watching this film, I wonder if that’s a myth. For instance, the German Wandervogel you depict from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were quite free-spirited and daring. Savage: The cycle is the same, but the circumstances are different. Each generation has similar characteristics because it’s a physical and developmental stage of life that happens to everyone but within different societies and different context. I think there’s always a proportion of teens that are going to be rebels. There’s always a proportion that are going to be extremists and they’re always going to be the much larger proportion against whom the rebels and the extremists act: kids who just want to carry on and live life just like their parents did. Wolf: The focus of our film is these exceptional teenagers who are inventing new styles of communication, who are reimagining the future and the Wandervogel — this youth-led movement that’s incredibly liberated — is an example of that. Savage: Matt found extraordinary footage that hasn’t been seen. Schwartzman: I don’t believe that Wandervogel footage has ever been seen in a documentary. It comes from a museum for youth movements in Germany who do not typically license out their footage. When I look at pop stars like Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber, I feel like we’ve entered a period of extended adolescence. Wolf: The starting point for me has always been, why is the culture obsessed with youth and where does this obsession come from? I do think that obsession has only intensified over time, but it’s hard to speculate about why that is. You mentioned the archetype of Justin Timberlake . In Teenage , we’re really finding the root and source of that, beginning with Rudolph Valentino, and with kids who fashioned their hair to look like him and who rioted at his funeral, and then progressing to Frank Sinatra , the first giant teen commercial pop star. Savage: Matt’s totally right. It has intensified because it’s become a huge industry. I’m much older than [Matt and Jason] and when I was a teenager it wasn’t this thing it is now. Since I was a young man, the whole area of pop culture and media has expanded exponentially. Wolf: Films that are about youth culture are usually focused on the now, and I thought it was a provocative strategy to make a film about youth that is based completely in the past — not even the recent past, the distant past. So it’s not working against the obsession with youth but it’s trying to attack the ideas and issue of youth culture in a totally different way. Instead of making a film about punks and hippies and skaters and Justin Bieber , it’s about flappers and jitterbugs. Schwartzman: He is making a movie about the punks and the skaters and Bieber. It’s called Teenage 2. That was going to be my next question. Would you consider making a Part 2? Wolf: Part of the reason Jon wrote the book in the style that he did is that, after the war, youth culture becomes this global phenomenon. The American model of the teen years spreads everywhere. It proliferates at such a rapid pace and is so gigantic that it’s probably not possible to explore the subject in a comprehensive way. Looking at this pre-history that led up to the creation of the teenager felt like the perfect way to explore the themes and ideas of youth culture in a deeper sense. So, to me, this film completes the idea. Schwartzman: He had planned to go to the ’60s but he ran out of computer space. Savage: If I was able to do a follow-up to the book — and I think it would actually make a good film — I would go from ’45 to say ’54. Elvis. But then it just gets insane. The level of data increases exponentially. Wolf: And then it becomes like a TV special or a textbook that doesn’t really go deep into much at all. After the war, it’s really difficult to not be just a greatest hits compilation. Watching Teenage left me with the distinct impression that if you had to choose the one medium that has had the most influence over youth culture, it would be music. Savage: Music is very, very important. Again, from a European prospective, America’s great gift to the world is black American music. I’m still in awe of it after listening to it for 50 years, and to me one of the high spots of the film is the section about Swing. My single favorite piece of footage is the Chicago Swing Jamboree with 200,000 kids going crazy in 1938. There’s an integrated audience, everybody is going nuts you see this black American guy with a bowler hat — and he’s pogoing. That said it all to me. Wolf: When I started making the film I thought it would be a deeper investigation of pop culture, but it ended up becoming much more political than I ever expected. I feel like the story of the German Swing Kids is the perfect synthesis of all the themes and the tension between politics and pop culture in the film. Here you have these kids who are like proto-punks: They have wild fashion, they dress very flamboyantly, they’re smuggling in music from America, and they’re doing it as a form of rebellion against the Nazi regime. They don’t perceive themselves as activists, but they’re doing it with great courage. It shows the political power of popular culture in a certain context. The film is also about the spread of American culture throughout the world and music facilitated that like nothing else. In the 1920’s, the British narrator says, “I got my hands on all the jazz records. My mum asked me why it was good and I said, ‘Because it comes from America.'” Savage: Swing looks to me like the proper birth of youth culture, certainly in a mass form, even more so than jazz in the ’20s. Wolf: The Chicago Swing Jamboree is so meaningful because you see these teenagers pioneering this new style of expression and dance. It has its own slang, its own music vocabulary. Savage: It’s own lifestyle. Wolf: And it spreads to become a mainstream phenomenon. What’s next for each of you guys? Wolf: I’m in the early stages of developing a bunch of projects. Jon and I are hoping to collaborate on a new film based on an unprecedented archive of gay life that this collector has. It’s a personal photography collection of early gay life. I’m also working on a documentary portrait of Hilary Knight , the illustrator of Eloise . Savage: I’m writing a new book about the year 1966 in pop culture and youth culture. Schwartzman: I just finished a film about the making of Mary Poppins . Sounds so dumb compared to what you guys just said. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Teenage is as rebellious a film as the territory it covers. Based on punk author Jon Savage ‘s 2007 book Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture 1875-1945 , Matt Wolf’s documentary eschews the talking heads and Chyroned dates that dominate the genre to immerse the moviegoer in a visually and aurally sumptuous history lesson. Wolf uses rare archival footage, period-piece recreations and a score by Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox to depict the evolution of teen culture via a number of influential and unconventional subcultures — swing kids, Boy Scouts, flappers, the German Wandervogel and even Nazi Youth — that coalesced from the late 19th century through the end of World War II. Understand them and today’s teens don’t seem so mystifying. I sat down with Wolf (he’s in the center of photo at left), Savage (he’s the one wearing orange pants) and the movie’s executive producer, actor Jason Schwartzman ( Moonrise Kingdom ) at the Tribeca Film Festival. Below is an edited version of our discussion: Movieline: Jason, how did you get to be the executive producer of Teenage ? Jason Schwartzman: When Matt’s movie about Arthur Russell came out, Wild Combination , I saw it multiple times in the course of a couple days, told everybody that I could possibly tell about it and showed it to one of my best friends Humberto Leon , who owns the fashion company Opening Ceremony . And when he saw that it was directed by Matt Wolf, he said, “Oh, Matt’s a really good friend of mine.” One thing led to another and Humberto connected Matt and I to make a short film for his store opening in Japan. We spent a lovely beautiful afternoon together in Toronto. It was just a beautiful day, and I felt instantly connected to Matt. I hope it’s okay that I say that. Matt Wolf: Please. Schwartzman: Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Wolf: No, I’m okay. Schwartzman: Too much pressure? After that, we started talking about books and music, and Matt said he was trying to make a documentary based on Jon Savage’s book Teenage . Being a fan of music and culture, I knew and loved Jon and was excited about this idea. And then a couple years later? Wolf: A year or two, I don’t know. Schwartzman: I reached out to Matt and said, “What’s going on with the movie? Is there anything I can try to do?” That began a process of getting the word out there and finding a way to finish the movie and make it happen. Movieline: You’ve taken a very unorthodox approach to making a non-fiction film. You call it “living collage.” Can you explain what you mean by that? Matt Wolf: When I read Jon’s book Teenage I didn’t just see it as source material. It helped me imagine a philosophy for the filmmaking. John is well known for his book on punk, England’s Dreaming , and in Teenage, he treated history in a punk way. Early on in our collaboration, he told me about something he observed in the 1970s: He saw these teenage punks wearing thrift clothes from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s and they would cut them up and reassemble them with safety pins into something new. He called that “living collage.” It really struck a chord with me and made me think, “Well what about living collage as a kind of filmmaking style, where we pick and choose these kind of documents and fragments from previous youth cultures and reassemble them into something that feels fresh and new.” And so living collage plays out visually in the way the film looks. In terms of the storytelling, the reason it probably feels unconventional is that, rather than telling the story with experts and historians, the film is told from the point of view of youth. And in John’s book, a huge basis of it is actual quotes from teenagers that are sourced from diaries and journalistic sources and books. And we kind of did a living collage of these quotes as well. You go so far as to not always identify who is talking. The moviegoer is essentially left to absorb what’s coming at him. Jon Savage: In an earlier edit we had lots of dates and times and Matt decided, and I thought it was a great idea, to actually take them out. Although it was good to have them, they were like the foundation. In any production, you have to start with a foundation and when the product is actually made, you don’t need [that foundation] any more. It’s not as if you need to explain Hitler Youth to a lot of people. It’s interesting that you say that because I thought the movie flowed like a piece of music — a punk symphony, you could say. Wolf: Yeah, that analogy makes sense to me, too. Music exists almost wall-to-wall through the film, and I perceive the voiceovers as being like lyrics. Very little of the archival footage we source has sound on it. . The voiceover is meant to provide a narrative foundation and to deepen the emotional impact of the film. It’s also meant to provide context in a personal way where it’s helpful. So kind of like lyrics in a song, you can just listen and hear it and have an emotional response to what you hear. Or that experience can be deepened by listening to the ideas in the lyrics. One of the first things I did when I started making this movie was to match archival footage to contemporary music that felt really transformational. It felt like a departure from how we normally see archival footage being used. How did you come to use Deer Hunter’s Bradford Cox to score the movie? Wolf: Bradford is my favorite contemporary musician, and we had actually corresponded as teenagers on an early blog that he ran. We reconnected over a music-themed film I made called Wild Combination years ago, and I approached him very early on in the process of Teenage to ask him if he’d like to score it. He wrote back saying, “Yes,” right away. But, like I said, the film is wall-to-wall music, and I’ve also included some pre-existing songs in the film as well. Savage: I gave Matt a hard drive. Wolf: Yeah, Jon gave me a lot of ideas for that music, too. I think our shared taste in music also was a helpful starting point. Jon, should someone who plans to see Teenage read your book before or after watching the movie? Savage: Whichever way, but, actually, I think the movie stands on its own. War plays an important role in this movie: On one hand, it’s responsible for the cross-pollination of teen cultures from around the world. On the other, it turns teens into adults very quickly. Wolf: It destroys them. At the beginning of this story, young people are perceived as a social problem. They need to be controlled. They’re sent to war and what happens to them in World War I is a kind of foundational trauma that creates teenage rebellion as we know it. It creates generational tension, and it drives the whole story. Then you have World War II, where young people are essentially sacrificed as cannon fodder by adults. But, at the same time, war stimulates the economy and enables teens to earn money and have a certain level of freedom. It’s as consumers that teenagers become the ultimate stakeholders in societies. War can lead to the destruction of their innocence, but it can also empower them with a certain level of freedom in terms of time and space and economics. War is the rear prism through which youth found their place in society. Savage: In our different ways, when I was doing the book and you were doing the film, we both fund the wartime stuff very hard. Wolf: Totally. I think the Hitler stuff is really intense. It’s at once totally intoxicating and absorbing. The reason Hitler and the Nazi experience for youth is a big part of the film is that Hitler both empowered and destroyed youth like no one else in history. In youth, he saw the potential to reimagine the world, but to very destructive and evil ends. It seems like every generation of adults laments how adventurous or promiscuous teens have become. But after watching this film, I wonder if that’s a myth. For instance, the German Wandervogel you depict from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were quite free-spirited and daring. Savage: The cycle is the same, but the circumstances are different. Each generation has similar characteristics because it’s a physical and developmental stage of life that happens to everyone but within different societies and different context. I think there’s always a proportion of teens that are going to be rebels. There’s always a proportion that are going to be extremists and they’re always going to be the much larger proportion against whom the rebels and the extremists act: kids who just want to carry on and live life just like their parents did. Wolf: The focus of our film is these exceptional teenagers who are inventing new styles of communication, who are reimagining the future and the Wandervogel — this youth-led movement that’s incredibly liberated — is an example of that. Savage: Matt found extraordinary footage that hasn’t been seen. Schwartzman: I don’t believe that Wandervogel footage has ever been seen in a documentary. It comes from a museum for youth movements in Germany who do not typically license out their footage. When I look at pop stars like Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber, I feel like we’ve entered a period of extended adolescence. Wolf: The starting point for me has always been, why is the culture obsessed with youth and where does this obsession come from? I do think that obsession has only intensified over time, but it’s hard to speculate about why that is. You mentioned the archetype of Justin Timberlake . In Teenage , we’re really finding the root and source of that, beginning with Rudolph Valentino, and with kids who fashioned their hair to look like him and who rioted at his funeral, and then progressing to Frank Sinatra , the first giant teen commercial pop star. Savage: Matt’s totally right. It has intensified because it’s become a huge industry. I’m much older than [Matt and Jason] and when I was a teenager it wasn’t this thing it is now. Since I was a young man, the whole area of pop culture and media has expanded exponentially. Wolf: Films that are about youth culture are usually focused on the now, and I thought it was a provocative strategy to make a film about youth that is based completely in the past — not even the recent past, the distant past. So it’s not working against the obsession with youth but it’s trying to attack the ideas and issue of youth culture in a totally different way. Instead of making a film about punks and hippies and skaters and Justin Bieber , it’s about flappers and jitterbugs. Schwartzman: He is making a movie about the punks and the skaters and Bieber. It’s called Teenage 2. That was going to be my next question. Would you consider making a Part 2? Wolf: Part of the reason Jon wrote the book in the style that he did is that, after the war, youth culture becomes this global phenomenon. The American model of the teen years spreads everywhere. It proliferates at such a rapid pace and is so gigantic that it’s probably not possible to explore the subject in a comprehensive way. Looking at this pre-history that led up to the creation of the teenager felt like the perfect way to explore the themes and ideas of youth culture in a deeper sense. So, to me, this film completes the idea. Schwartzman: He had planned to go to the ’60s but he ran out of computer space. Savage: If I was able to do a follow-up to the book — and I think it would actually make a good film — I would go from ’45 to say ’54. Elvis. But then it just gets insane. The level of data increases exponentially. Wolf: And then it becomes like a TV special or a textbook that doesn’t really go deep into much at all. After the war, it’s really difficult to not be just a greatest hits compilation. Watching Teenage left me with the distinct impression that if you had to choose the one medium that has had the most influence over youth culture, it would be music. Savage: Music is very, very important. Again, from a European prospective, America’s great gift to the world is black American music. I’m still in awe of it after listening to it for 50 years, and to me one of the high spots of the film is the section about Swing. My single favorite piece of footage is the Chicago Swing Jamboree with 200,000 kids going crazy in 1938. There’s an integrated audience, everybody is going nuts you see this black American guy with a bowler hat — and he’s pogoing. That said it all to me. Wolf: When I started making the film I thought it would be a deeper investigation of pop culture, but it ended up becoming much more political than I ever expected. I feel like the story of the German Swing Kids is the perfect synthesis of all the themes and the tension between politics and pop culture in the film. Here you have these kids who are like proto-punks: They have wild fashion, they dress very flamboyantly, they’re smuggling in music from America, and they’re doing it as a form of rebellion against the Nazi regime. They don’t perceive themselves as activists, but they’re doing it with great courage. It shows the political power of popular culture in a certain context. The film is also about the spread of American culture throughout the world and music facilitated that like nothing else. In the 1920’s, the British narrator says, “I got my hands on all the jazz records. My mum asked me why it was good and I said, ‘Because it comes from America.'” Savage: Swing looks to me like the proper birth of youth culture, certainly in a mass form, even more so than jazz in the ’20s. Wolf: The Chicago Swing Jamboree is so meaningful because you see these teenagers pioneering this new style of expression and dance. It has its own slang, its own music vocabulary. Savage: It’s own lifestyle. Wolf: And it spreads to become a mainstream phenomenon. What’s next for each of you guys? Wolf: I’m in the early stages of developing a bunch of projects. Jon and I are hoping to collaborate on a new film based on an unprecedented archive of gay life that this collector has. It’s a personal photography collection of early gay life. I’m also working on a documentary portrait of Hilary Knight , the illustrator of Eloise . Savage: I’m writing a new book about the year 1966 in pop culture and youth culture. Schwartzman: I just finished a film about the making of Mary Poppins . Sounds so dumb compared to what you guys just said. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
It’s the season finale of The Real Housewives of Atlanta and “Divas Into Focus” throws us a party where it’s hard to tell who’s coming and who’s going. We recap all the divorces and diamond rings in our THG +/- review. Before we jump into Kenya Moore ‘s party, or is it a gala? Does anyone know what the heck is difference? Let’s check in with the other Housewives first. Phaedra Parks drags Kandi Burruss to check out her next venture. Pretty pink stun guns called Phaedra Sparks. Seriously. That’s it. Minus 15. Supposedly Phaedra is a lawyer, a wannabe funeral director, and a wannabe fitness video producer, and now she wants to throw her name on a taser. So I guess when someone misuses one of her tasers and kills someone she can handle both the lawsuit and the funeral. Porsha and Kordell head to therapy. Plus 20 …in theory. Reality tells something different. We all know Kordell’s controlling but in therapy he comes off as an arrogant, self absorbed, ass. He tells Porsha that if her goal is to win an argument then she better be ready for disappointment because she’s going to lose every time. Minus 12. Hasn’t he ever heard that relationships are all about compromise? But it gets worse. When talking about Porsha’s miscarriage he tells the therapist, “As tough as it was for her, it was extremely overwhelming for me.” Minus 30. It’s as though Porsha’s feelings are always secondary to his. When it comes to marriage and raising a family it’s not that these two aren’t on the same page…they’re not even in the same book. Let’s head to Kenya’s party where the theme is iconic black women in film. If you thought that sounded like a fun night, boy were you wrong. Porsha decides she doesn’t want to look like a fool so she passes on the BAPS costume and comes as Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award. Porsha looks great. Plus 13. Kenya is furious. She claims she had events planned around each of the characters and now Porsha has ruined the show. Is that true? Kenya claims e-mails were exchanged. So maybe she’s got the right to be angry…but throwing Porsha out makes her looks like one crazy b*tch. Minus 18. The aftermath just gets crazier. Did anyone else notice that Kordell gave Brandon all kinds of hell on Porsha’s behalf but when two burly men were kicking his wife out of the party he was suspiciously quiet. Minus 11. The rest of the Housewives turn to leave in protest. As far as costumes go…Kandi looked kind of ridiculous as Tina Turner but it’s hard not to in the 1980s What’s Love Got To Do With It music video get up. Phaedra went over the top as Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman. Cynthia was suppose to be Diana Ross but you could hardly tell. Her outfit looked like something Cynthia herself would wear. Kenya rocked it as Foxy Brown. Plus 20 …but then NeNe came to town. NeNe Leakes was awesome as Grace Jones. Did anyone else notice that everyone was talking about leaving until NeNe got there and then they all turned and followed her back in. So funny. NeNe arrives and her entourage follows. And who ever would have thought that Miss NeNe would be the voice of reason once again as she talked Kenya down off the proverbial ledge. Talk about an odd season. In the end we find out that: Porsha and Kordell filed for divorce . Really? That’s all Bravo’s got to say on the subject. Phaedra’s expecting baby boy #2 and is producing a workout video…no competition is expected. Kandi and Todd are engaged. Congrats to the happy couple. Cynthia – She’s doing another pageant and helping NeNe plan her re-nuptuals. NeNe’s still jumping between Atlanta and Hollywood. Gregg gave her a 15 carat engagement ring! Kenya Is dating an African oil tycoon and claims her DVD is outselling Phaedra’s. I wonder if Bravo will release the real numbers on that. Next week we get to see it all unravel during the Housewives reunion show. I wouldn’t miss it. EPISODE TOTAL: -33! SEASON TOTAL: – 292!
Three prison inmates were assigned to clean up a park near the Yacolt, Wash., minimum security correctional facility where they’re incarcerated last week. They ended up saving three young lives. During their work-release community service, Nelson Pettis, 37, Larry Bohn, 29, and Jon Fowler, 29, heard children’s screams coming from a nearby creek. Rushing to the water’s edge, the prisoners saw three young boys struggling to keep their heads above water. The children’s small canoe had capsized. The boys struggled to stay above water in the cold, 25-mph current rushing towards the Washington River, and the inmates knew they were in trouble. “It was raging pretty fast,” Pettis told KPTV news. “They were really scared.” He and Bohn didn’t think twice, leaping into the water to grab the boys, later identified as brothers ages 8, 10 and 16, and carrying them to a small island. There, they awaited emergency rescue. “They kept telling us, ‘Thank you, thank you,'” Bohn told reporters, adding that the three kids were “really scared” but very grateful and will be alright. “I think we did something that any good person would do. You see three helpless kids in a river, you help. That’s what you do,” said Fowler. “Just cause we’re incarcerated, doesn’t mean we’re bad people. We made some bad choices in our lives, but we’re still, we’re just like everybody else.” “We’re just paying our debt for what we did wrong.”
On a night filled with tears and a few decent performances, American Idol passed 28 men on to the next round last night. Did your favorite make the cut? Or are you already prepared to turn on Season 12 and its new panel of judges? Scroll down for a list of many of the remaining males and sound off now… Lazaro Arbos Curtis Finch Jr. Devin Velez Gurpreet Singh Sarin Cortez Shaw Jimmy Smith Nick Boddington Charlie Askew Burnell Taylor Marvin Calderon Adam Sanders Johnny Keyser Vincent Powell Mathenee Treco Charles Watson Bryant Tadeo David Oliver Willis Elijah Liu Jeff Hermano Josh Holiday Joshua Jada Davila Kevin Harris
Ashley Riggitano, 22, committed suicide by jumping off New York City’s George Washington Bridge on Wednesday. But that’s only part of the sad story. The blonde fashionista left behind a “suicide diary” in her Louis Vuitton bag with the names of enemies on a “grudge list,” according to reports. According to authorities, Riggitano deliberately placed her designer purse in the walkway of the famous NYC bridge before leaping to her death. Commuters watched in shock as she plunged into the Hudson River and sank into the depths, from which the harbor patrol pulled out her lifeless body. The intern for NY-based jewelry and fashion designer Alex Woo answered many questions about her fatal leap in handwritten notes she left behind . In those notes, Ashley Riggitano detailed how she was tormented by five individual girls, whom she demanded were not invited to her funeral. “All my other ‘friends’ are in it for gossip ,” she wrote cryptically. “Never there.” Riggitano, originally of Paramus, N.J., also vented her anger at a man whom she claimed mistreated her, and said she hopes he “gets what he deserves.” The aspiring designer had a history of emotional issues and had tried to commit suicide at least once before, according to the New York Post . Prescription drugs Adderall (usually prescribed for ADHD) and Klonopin (which treats panic attacks and seizures) were both found in her purse. Riggitano graduated from Laboratory Institute of Merchandising in Manhattan this year, after which she interned at high-profile fashion companies. She also began her own business called Missfits, where she designed and sold bracelets. So what drove her to give up such a promising career and life? Who knows, but some people close to her are more upset than anything. Wednesday, Riggitano’s business partner, Victoria Van Thunen, wrote a scathing message on her Facebook page slamming her so-called best friend. “Those who incessantly blame others as the cause of their issues should perhaps take a step back and reevaluate these situations,” wrote Thunen. Accusing her friend of taking the easy way out, she adds, “The common thread may be that ‘they’ aren’t the problem, but rather that YOU are.’” The other girls Riggitano blames in her diary appear to be friends from college or work, but from the notes it was not clear whether their “offenses” were real.
Turns out you can have it your way, even after you’re dead. Funeral For Pennsylvania WWII Veteran Includes Procession Stop At Burger King A York Pennsylvania war vet loved his Burger King so much his daughter had his funeral procession make one final stop at the before burying him. Via NY Daily News reports : David Kime Jr. “lived by his own rules,” daughter Linda Phiel said. He considered the lettuce on a burger his version of healthy eating, she said. To give him a whopper of a send-off Saturday, the funeral procession stopped at a Burger King where each mourner got a sandwich for the road. Kime got one last burger too, the York Daily Record reported. It was placed atop his flag-draped coffin at the cemetery. Phiel said the display wasn’t a joke, rather a happy way of honoring her father and the things that brought him joy. “He lived a wonderful life and on his own terms,” she said. Kime, 88, a World War II veteran, died Jan. 20. Restaurant manager Margaret Hess said she knew his face and his order. She and her crew made 40 burgers for the funeral procession. “It’s nice to know he was a loyal customer up until the end — the very end,” she said. No disrespect to the dead, but which do you think will decompose faster — him or the burger? R.I.P. APImages
I’m Brittany and those of you who know me or follow my Twitter know how long I’ve been trying to meet Justin. My dream finally came true. On November 23rd I attended the Ottawa Believe tour and YES it was hella good. I was lucky enough to get VIP M&G tickets for my birthday from my mom. I was counting down the days, it felt like forever! I was always told I was too young to enter contests, I didn’t live in the right area, I was always too young to see him at Much Music etc., but this time I finally got the chance to meet him. I waited in line for the M&G and got one of his tour picks! They let us walk in and we had to walk down about 100 stairs. When I was waiting I saw Alfredo. He winked at me and waved! At this point I was already planning my funeral because ALFREDO winked at me . I walked in and there he is. My idol, my inspiration, the person who changed my life, my everything. Justin grabbed my arm and said, “Hey sweetie!” and hugged me. I had planned to thank him for many things because he honestly did change my life. If Justin wasn’t around I wouldn’t be the person who I am today and that’s very true. I was like, “Thank you, uh thank you for everything. You’ve really changed me,” and he looked at me and said, “You’re welcome cutie.” JUSTIN DREW BIEBER CALLED ME CUTE. (I didn’t look cute either, I looked like shit from waiting outside in the rain for 6 hours lol) I bursted into tears and he was like, “No don’t cry! It’s okay!” and I just looked at him in awe. Did he really think it was okay? I WAS DYING. Then the security said it was time to go and I just looked at Justin and we stared into each others eyes. He hugged me again and said bye. Then I walked out. Yes this was about 2 minutes. Yes it was the best two minutes of my life. Yes I will never forget it and I’m very thankful for it. After I sat 3rd row at his show which was perfect. I literally cried most of the time. I sang my heart out and cried.. a lot. Pattie, Jeremy, Fredo, Jazzy, Jaxon, Bruce and Dianne were about 1 METER from me! While I was crying Pattie looked at me and said ‘It’s okay!’ How embarrassing eh. Oh well, I will never forget this day ever. Thank you Justin for everything! Don’t ever give up beliebers. Your dream WILL come true! -@bieberholic101 (I’m on the right) Read the original: I’m Brittany and those of you who know me or follow my…
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