Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were inducted Sunday into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, but it was Bruce Springsteen who stole the show when The Boss made a surprise appearance at Asbury Park’s Convention Hall to introduce his longtime friend and guitarist Steven Van Zandt into the hall. Springsteen himself was admitted a decade earlier. The two joined forces onstage and played “I Don’t Want To Go Home,” trading vocals and eventually welcoming the entire class of inductees — and many of their family members — onstage to close the show. “We did the impossible: We made New Jersey hip,” said Van Zandt, who is from Middletown. Then, referring to his surprising second career as an actor in the hit HBO series The Sopranos, in which he played mobster Silvio Dante, Van Zandt quipped, “I had the experience of witnessing New Jersey become fashionable twice in one lifetime. Thank you, New Jersey; you have been very, very good to me.”
■ This year’s Cannes Film Festival kicked off with a legal dispute, as a Paris court weighs whether the festival can show Monty Python star Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. A hearing was held in the case Monday, on the eve of the festival’s opening on the French Riviera. Gilliam’s film is scheduled to close the festival on May 19. But Portuguese producer Paulo Branco, who initially worked with Gilliam on the film, claims he also has rights to the movie and has sued Cannes organizers to stop them from showing it. “The work of each producer on this movie needs to be respected and not be trampled on by the director,” Branco told reporters at the court. Gilliam, 77, contests Branco’s claims. Gilliam’s lawyer, Benjamin Sarfaty, said banning the film from Cannes is “not justified.” He said Branco’s claim that showing the movie at Cannes would cause him “irreversible damage … is just a figment of imagination.” The court is expected to issue its ruling Wednesday.
■ George Michael’s family is asking fans to remove flowers, photos and other tributes left outside the late singer’s two homes. A grassy square across from Michael’s London house is bedecked in bouquets, candles, flags and handwritten messages for the singer, who died in December 2016. Similar offerings have been left outside the house in Goring, 50 miles from London, where Michael died.
In a post last week on Michael’s website, his father, sisters and friend David Austin said they were touched by the tributes, but felt they couldn’t ask neighbors “to continue to accept as normality, the memorials so personal to you all, to remain as and where they are any longer.” They asked fans to remove the tributes by May 27, “leaving any you wish us to have.”