Family of New York Dolls' David Johansen raising funds for stage 4 cancer care
Punk legend David Johansen's family is raising funds to pay for his stage 4 cancer treatment.
The actor and former New York Dolls frontman has been living with cancer for nearly a decade and a brain tumor for five years, according to a Sweet Relief fundraiser. In a statement to Rolling Stone on Monday, Johansen, 75, said a recent fall down the stairs, in which he broke his back in two different places, has made matters worse.
"We've been living with my illness for a long time, still having fun, seeing friends and family, carrying on, but this tumble the day after Thanksgiving really brought us to a whole new level of debilitation," he told the outlet. "This is the worst pain I've ever experienced in my entire life. I've never been one to ask for help, but this is an emergency. Thank you."
USA TODAY has reached out to Johansen's family for comment.
According to the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund page, the family is especially private, "but we feel compelled to share this now, due to the increasingly severe financial burden our family is facing," Johansen's daughter, Leah Hennessey, wrote.
The "Oz" actor has been "bedridden and incapacitated" since the fall, she added, and requires around-the-clock care from his wife, Mara Hennessey.
"To continue his treatment and give him the best chance of recovery, David and Mara will need full time assistance," Leah Hennessey continued. "As hilarious and wise as David continues to be, he is physically debilitated and his care exceeds what we are capable of providing without specialized professional help."
Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi's 2022 documentary "Personality Crisis: One Night Only" tells the story of the New York Dolls lead singer and songwriter, who went on to take on the alter ego Buster Poindexter and form the David Johansen band and The Harry Smiths.
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Atlantic
28 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Lights Out, With a Whimper
Carrie Bradshaw's last episode of television ended not with a bang but with a flush, which feels appropriate somehow. 'Party of One,' the series finale of HBO Max's And Just Like That, rehashes old patterns for the show's last hurrah, but no one's heart seems to really be in it: Miranda tries to adjust to an unexpected pregnancy; Seema wonders if she could be happily partnered without marriage; Charlotte tells Carrie, 'I'm so excited to show you my new hallway,' to which Carrie replies, pro forma, 'I may be alone for the rest of my life.' The image left in my head, though, is of the toilet bowl being frantically flushed by Charlotte's art-dealer boss, a man whose private jet can't spare him from the gastrointestinal Thanksgiving issues of a lactose-intolerant Gen Zer. Humiliation, more than anything else, has been the theme of all three seasons of And Just Like That, a cringe comedy without comedy. 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Instead we have breakfast at 7 a.m. and affairs we try to forget as quickly as possible.' Over the course of six seasons and two movies, the show's thrillingly cynical core got smothered by cloying commercialism—a fixation on both wide-eyed romance and flamboyant luxury. What stayed consistent, though, was the disgust the show seemed to manifest anytime it was forced to think about the corporeal bodies beneath the characters' clothes: Carrie's horror at Miranda's postpartum nipples and Samantha's disgust at her unwaxed bikini line, Charlotte's refusal to look at her own vagina, Anthony's appalled proclamation—when Samantha returned from Los Angeles approximately three pounds heavier—of 'Mother of God, what's with the gut!' And Just Like That has been a lot of things since its debut late in 2021: an apologia for the sins of the past, a lookbook, a backdrop for cameos from the two most Machiavellian men on reality television. But it's consistently been oddly squeamish about both sex and human physicality—almost pathologically so. During the first season, critics winced at the heavy-handed flagellation of the characters for their unconscious bias and uptight middle age; during the second, the show's lack of purpose and stakes crystallized into excruciating storylines about strap-on sex toys and, in one case, an unsolicited octogenarian dick pic that rudely interrupted a fundraiser with Gloria Steinem. The third season, set in the more genteel location of Carrie's new Gramercy Park townhouse, seemed nevertheless stuck on the idea that anyone still tuning in must be watching with the sound off, cackling at the visuals of their favorite characters being ritualistically shamed for the crime of aging. And so: We had not one but two stories about Harry's penis—first a brief examination of something called 'ghost sperm' that troubled Charlotte during sex, followed by a multi-episode storyline about prostate cancer that left Harry impotent and peeing all over his raw-denim jeans. Seema's armpits occupied a variety of scenes, culminating in the gardener she began dating recommending a crystal deodorant that failed her during a crucial business meeting. Charlotte's sudden struggle with vertigo left her staggering all over Manhattan like a toddler on a boat. Miranda, cursed on this show like no one else, had sex with someone who turned out to be a virgin nun, accidentally flashed Carrie, became a meme after a disastrous appearance on live television, and eventually found love with a woman who's strikingly weird about her dogs, even for a Brit. And Just Like That, as Jake Nevins wrote in July, 'feels, at times, openly hostile to its own source material and even to the characters themselves.' The pie shoved in Anthony's face by his lover, Giuseppe, felt like a neat distillation of how crudely the series seemed to clown its characters, week after week after week. Earlier this year, I wrote about television's current obsession with extreme wealth, and how shows such as And Just Like That suffer from the diminished stakes that come with easy abundance. When you're insulated from calamity, maybe, the worst thing that can happen is physical degradation—a reminder that no matter how big your closet, how exclusive your couture, we all share the same basic bodily functions, which can fail and shame us in all the same discomfiting ways. 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No one wants their fantasies to be punctured so abruptly, and yet both scenes demonstrate how out of touch these characters have become, and how hard it is for us to empathize with them in turn. Anthropological curiosity used to define Carrie's work as a columnist; now, in her 50s, she's happier behind the walls of an inward-facing fantasy land, posing for no one in her pre–Gilded Age living room, and turning her romantic misadventures into a god-awfully mawkish historical novel. It's not the ending I would have chosen, but it sure does make it easier to say goodbye.
Time Magazine
an hour ago
- Time Magazine
Charlotte and Miranda Deserved More From 'And Just Like That'
Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of And Just Like That. And Just Like That put loyal Sex and the City fans through a lot. There was Big's death by Peloton in the very first episode, the diabolical caricature of a non-binary person that was podcaster/comedian Che Diaz, and a slew of both plot continuity errors and tonal inconsistencies. Not to mention the larger-than-life absence of one Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall). But, now that the Sex and the City spinoff has officially come to an end, we can definitively say that one of the show's worst offenses was the ways in which it failed two of its predecessor's most important and beloved central characters: Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). While Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) received main-character treatment and sufficient closure in the two-part Season 3 finale—which was announced as the overall series' finale just a few weeks before it aired—Charlotte and Miranda capped off a season of lukewarm storylines with a figurative whimper. Considering how creator Michael Patrick King broke the news of the decision to end the show, it seems possible the Season 3 finale was not initially intended to be And Just Like That's final installment. Were that ever confirmed to be the case, we'd be slightly more willing to forgive the episode's missteps. However, if we are to believe King's claims that it became clear to him all the way back when he was writing the finale that it "might be a wonderful place to stop," and that he and Parker held off on announcing the news simply because they "didn't want the word 'final' to overshadow the fun of watching the season," the show's late-stage offenses becomes far less excusable. Let's start with Miranda. While Season 3 did finally give And Just Like That-era Miranda an age-appropriate and intellectually compatible romantic partner in the form of Joy (Dolly Wells), it wasn't enough to make up for the weekly humiliation rituals to which she was subjected—from being turned into a viral news blooper meme to proving herself an inexplicably terrible houseguest. Even with mere minutes to go in the series finale, we were forced to watch as Miranda spent Thanksgiving evening scrubbing the bathroom floor clean following a disastrous toilet overflow caused by Epcot (Spike Einbinder), the Disney park name-bearing and lactose intolerant friend of Mia (Ellie Stiller), the soon-to-be baby mama of a still freshly adult Brady (Niall Cunningham). If you're not sure what to make of the sentence you just read, we don't blame you. But, case in point. While Miranda was involved in embarrassing hijinks in Sex and the City, she was never the butt of the joke. And where her storyline in Sex and the City culminated in a historically cynical Miranda finding happiness in the life she was building with Steve (David Eigenberg) and baby Brady in Brooklyn, this time around, Miranda couldn't even be bothered to try to mend the rift that had opened between her and Brady over her meddling in his relationships before the credits rolled. As for Charlotte, well, she barely got any storyline at all. After a season of suffering from vertigo and doing her best to navigate the prostate cancer diagnosis of her beloved husband Harry (Evan Handler), Charlotte was all but sidelined in And Just Like That's finale. We saw her help Harry finally get his mojo back and continue to come to terms with the non-binary identity of their child Rock (Alexa Swinton), but for Charlotte personally, there was a glaring lack of substance. The show almost seemed to acknowledge this in a conversation between Charlotte and LTW (Nicole Ari Parker) in which Lisa lamented that marriage seems to always be about their husbands' feelings and disappointments rather than their own, and asked Charlotte whether she would still get married knowing what she knows now about "the way it really is." Charlotte's response? "Oh, absolutely." This squares with what we know about Charlotte's deep and abiding love for her family. But while Charlotte was always a traditionalist, in Sex and the City, she contained multitudes. The Charlotte that And Just Like That left us with felt, sadly and utterly disappointingly, far more one-dimensional.
New York Post
2 days ago
- New York Post
Even the most devoted ‘Sex and the City' fans were disgusted and disappointed by ‘And Just Like That' — the Fyre Festival of TV shows
'And Just Like That … ' ended as it started: terribly. I'm not the only 'Sex and the City' fan who thinks so. On Thursday, I attended a small viewing party for the finale of the reboot series with a group of pals who loved the original. Like me, the majority of them were disappointed and, yeah, disgusted. Advertisement 6 Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw at her laptop in the final scene of *And Just Like That … ' HBO 'This is unhinged!' one — dressed as actress Lucy Liu from her 2001 'SATC' cameo — shouted as a shockingly gross scene played out. 'Over twenty years of watching this show, and this is what we get?' What could have provoked such a response? Advertisement Thanksgiving dinner at Miranda's apartment, when a person named Epcot — yes, Epcot — clogged the toilet. Epcot is a friend of Mia, the hyper-flatulent girl knocked up by Miranda's son, Brady. But the show's writers didn't think it enough to simply tell us about plumbing difficulties. They showed us. For at least 10 seconds, the remains of Epcot's day assaulted our eyes. It was gag-inducing and vile. 6 Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) cleans up a clogged toilet in the finale of 'And Just Like That…' — then commits a disgusting act. HBO (Not even 'Dumb and Dumber' went so far as to allow the results of Jeff Daniel's laxative-induced bathroom ordeal to appear on screen). Advertisement And now, a glamorous franchise built on fashion, friendship and sex will be remembered for actual crap. Remember when fans were so excited for the premiere of 'And Just Like That … ' back in 2021? We were promised more time with the most fabulous friends the Big Apple has ever known. That first episode brought us up to current day for the iconic characters' lives. 6 In the series premiere of 'And Just Like That … ' Mr. Big played by Chris Noth dies of a heart attack. Photograph by Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Advertisement Miranda had gone to grad school, unleashing a barrage of micro-aggressions at her black professor. Charlotte struggled with her tomboy (soon to identify as nonbinary) daughter not wanting to wear a frilly Oscar de la Renta dress. Carrie, responding to current industry trends, fired Samantha as her book publicist; in turn, Samantha cut everyone off and moved to London. We met the 'queer, nonbinary, Mexican Irish diva' Che, who soon added another facet to 'their' lengthy identity cluster: the most insufferable character to ever appear on HBO (or Max or whatever they're calling it these days).. And Mr. Big died from a post-Peloton cardiac arrest. 6 Che (left, played by Sarah Ramirez) was the most insufferable character on the show. Photograph by Craig Blankenhorn/Max It was not an auspicious start. And still, I persevered through the woke morass. Even in this Season 3, as the series tried to extricate itself from the humorless pit of identity politics and limp toward the finish line with unrealistic plot lines and characters, poor acting — and far too much nudity from Cynthia Nixon, who disappeared the real Miranda so she could play herself. How would they land the plane? I joked that maybe they wouldn't. Perhaps, en route to a girls' trip in Portugal, the ladies would all die in a fiery plane crash and put us all out of our misery. That would have been brave and merciful. Advertisement Instead, with Thursday's series finale, we were given a literal pile of crap. 6 The good old days of 'Sex and the City' were edgy, funny and included the wild Samantha Jones, played by Kim Cattrall. Moviestore/Shutterstock Thankfully, HBO Max does not offer the scratch-and-sniff option. The gross-out continued as Miranda, wearing rubber gloves to clean the sewage leak in her bathroom, is surprised by her girlfriend — who she excitedly embraces, rubbing those contaminated gloves all over her beloved's back. Advertisement Instead of 'Awwww,' the room I was in filled with a chorus of 'Ewwww.' 'Take off the filthy gloves!' one friend yelled. It was like the Fyre Festival of streaming TV. 6 In the series finale, Carrie Bradshaw delivered pies to all of her friends on Thanksgiving Day. Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max Advertisement The show wrapped up with a soulless montage showing the characters in their respective homes, eating the Thanksgiving pies Carrie had hand delivered earlier in the day. Meanwhile, Carrie returned to her massive Gramercy spread solo. She took to her computer, erasing the epilogue of her novel set place in the 1800s — and instead wrote, 'The woman realized she was not alone. She was on her own.' After all that, Carrie ended up single in a home so big it could have eased our city's migrant housing issue. Advertisement Her love story, which drove the entire franchise, became an afterthought. But I did get a genuine laugh courtesy of 'Sex and the City' this week as I watched the new version of 'The Naked Gun.' In the movie, someone mentions Miranda Rights to the bumbling Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., ably played by Liam Neeson. He deadpans in response: 'No Carrie writes. Miranda is the lawyer.' And I couldn't help but wonder … if the stars and creators of 'And Just Like That … ' could go back in time and kill the series before it sullied a great legacy, would they? I hope so.
