Mister D: This may explain some things for those of little faith 🙂 …like Baltimore and on…
Still sassy
Bette Midler still has the voice and the spunk
BY MELISSA RUGGIERI
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Photo: BaltoBoy Steve Weiner
So what if Cher, Barry Manilow and Gloria Estefan are leaving the road for good” Bette Midler isn’t going anywhere. At least not anytime soon.
To prove it, she has subtitled her Kiss My Brass tour “I’m Not Retiring and You Can’t Make Me!”
Now in the second lap of the tremendously successful tour – launched nearly a year ago and grossing more than $33 million on its initial run – Midler is still chugging along to secondary markets such as Richmond, Raleigh, N.C., and Phoenix.
Midler is “beat,” she says, sliding in praise for her old showbiz contemporary Cher – “I have to give her a lot of credit for still being out there” – whose farewell tour has stretched into a marathon three years. But despite wrenching her back two weeks ago – an injury that has sidelined her usual running workout – and despite the strenuous, rapid-fire pace of her live act, Midler isn’t planning a three-hanky goodbye anytime soon.
“I never want to say never, and I don’t think anything can be predicted,” Midler said last week on her way to a gig in Baltimore. “I love music and I love singing and I love the shows. Will I do a shorter show next time” Probably. But I think you have to be adaptable and adjust with the times and your own situation. There are so many things I’ve studied for so long that I’ve never used in my work – whether I would change my style of production or travel with a full orchestra, which I’ve never done. You think of these things, but not when you’re tired. You can’t do anything when you’re tired.”
Midler turns 59 in December, but her stage antics belie any thought of creeping toward Social Security age. All of her trademark hilarity – wacky wheelchair-spinning mermaid Delores DeLago; the tributes to old-time one-liner queen Sophie Tucker – buffers a show already ripe with brass-inflected classics, weepy ballads and a fizzy Broadway medley.
Unlike that blink-and-you-miss-it Cher, Midler earns her top $125 ticket price in a whirlwind two hours that always finds her tailoring her patter to the city of the moment. Her preparation, which usually takes a day or so, “isn’t wizardry,” she says with a laugh, noting that she usually scours the Internet and the local newspapers for her material.
“The audience likes it when you connect,” she says. “And sometimes, I’m flying so much that it’s like that scene in ‘the Rose,” and I’m going, “Where am I?!”
Ah yes, ‘the Rose,” Midler’s notable acting turn from 1979, which earned her an Oscar nomination and launched a nonmusical career that would peak (“For the Boys”) and dip (“Drowning Mona”) for two decades.
Her most recent role came in a remake of “The Stepford Wives” on a shoot widely reported to be troubled and acrimonious. Midler refers to it as an “interesting experience,” before elaborating. “It was hard because of the weather and there was so much at stake,” she says. “Under those circumstances, all sorts of things happen. I wanted it to work like everyone else, but I made a lot of good friends on the set.”
When it is suggested that the film might find a cult following once released Nov. 9 on DVD, Midler brings up one of her more financially successful films, “Hocus Pocus.”
“That movie is huge on video. When kids see me, they think of me as the witch. So you know, that’s how I know I’ve made it,” she says.
As for her acting future, Midler isn’t planning another movie anytime soon. “I’m waiting to see how things go. I’d be happy to do another [movie], but if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.”
Midler also is diplomatic when discussing today’s crop of teen stars, many of whom hardly show the depth and range of multitalented entertainers such as herself, Cher and Barbra Streisand.
“I think there will be a lot of surprises,” she says. “A lot of these people are so young that they’re bound to make mistakes. But they’re also bound to learn. If they’re bright, they’ll figure it out.”
As even the upstarts know, tours are grueling, and with 21 shows to go after Richmond, Midler is trying to remain healthy. She still avidly follows the South Beach diet (“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah,” she says when asked if she’s still a fan of the diet that has trimmed her to tiny proportions).
Now that jogging is off the itinerary for a while, Midler’s main nonstage exercising comes from stretching. But sleeping also is a priority.
“It’s like being in a monastery in a way,” she says of touring. “You have your goals and you do what you have to do. I can barely drink. I can’t do any drugs at all. Everything affects your body. Between the flying and the coffee, it’s all you can do to keep yourself together.”
Once this tour wraps Dec. 12 in Minneapolis, Midler isn’t sure what she’s going to do. Last year’s collaboration with longtime colleague Barry Manilow on “The Rosemary Clooney Songbook” has moved more than half a million copies (keep an ear tuned for some Clooney songs in tonight’s show), but Midler has no similar projects on the docket. In fact, all that she has to look forward to is a glorious bunch of nothing.
“I’m just gonna lie down and take a long nap,” she says. “And then I’ll wake up and see what the world has to offer.”
Eye on R-Town
Richmond Times-Dispatch Oct 21, 2004
What rocks or rots in Richmond? Here’s our weekly take on R-town. Miss M does Richmond
What: More celebs in the city
Remarks: If you noticed a petite redhead teetering around on the cobblestones in Shockoe Slip, it very well could have been Bette Midler.
Midler and her sleepy entourage holed up in a Slip hotel yesterday afternoon, ordering breakfast from room service after what was surely a lengthy schlep to Richmond from her Tuesday night show in Providence, R.I.
And who can blame her for not wanting to leave one of the nicest rooms this hotel has to offer? Observers called her “very nice, very reserved, very pretty and very tiny” (props, apparently, to that South Beach Diet she’s religiously following).
But don’t bother bugging the Divine One. With her next concert date scheduled for Oct. 28 in Atlanta, she’s surely heading home after tonight’s Richmond Coliseum extravaganza. If you want to see her, buy a ticket.
(Or . . . check out today’s Weekend cover story on Page D20. Melissa Ruggieri’s review of Midler’s show also will appear in the late edition of tomorrow’s Flair section.)
