But violence is ok in Hollywood – well, yeah. Hooray for Douglas, Damon and Soderbergh!

Would this movie really do $50 to 70 million? How many of the “under 40″ crowd would go see this movie?

liberace was a creepy person, i’m told. in several ways; it will be interesting to see if the movie outs that part of him. i don’t have teevee, but i’ll add it to my 2014 netflix list. and yes, douglas, damon and s are very nice hollywood liberals and i’m glad for them.

If you’re only in it for $5 million it doesn’t need to make that kind of money, which is why HBO could do it.

And after you make money out of ancillary markets, you don’t need domestic boxoffice of $50 to $70 million to recover your costs even at $30 million.

Besides, this has Oscar written all over it. Which is why celebrities do these things for no money. Harvey Weinstein would give his left nut for this kind of film.

I’m not sure about the creepy part but I saw him in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. many yrs ago and What Great Fu(*&^% show it was. I talked some my biker/trucker/gangster friends into seeing him one night and they and the wifes had so much fun they went back the next night. He was amazing on stage. Pretty interesting group actors for sure.

Yep Twain so true.

Thanks Jane

Liberace was one of my heroes. When I said this to my friends (liberals, like myself), they said: “But he was gay.” Because I am straight as can be. Still,I admired him. I don’t know how he was creepy, only that when the doctors erroneously said he would die, he gave all his worldly possessions to his friends, then learned that he would live, and rejoiced that he could it all over again.

When three giant stars like Douglas, Damon and Soderbergh say they’ll do a film for $5 million, it could be the burning on the Muskogee phone book, and studio would hit the green light button.

$5 million? Seriously? That’s pretty much lunch money for the studio moguls. OK, I exaggerated a bit. Lunch and dinner, full parties, with good wine.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m already queued up for that Muskogee phone book picture. Stallone or Schwarzenegger? Wait…too literate and not enough bullets. Sorry, my bad.

Makes him a true Christian in my book.

(In Crow T. Robot voice:) This one’s for Scott Thorson.

But, yeah, Liberace was a major-league creep. Aside from regularly denying that he was gay and suing for libel every time someone said the obvious, he screwed his lover Thorson out of palimony (eventually throwing him a pittance out of court) and denied to the very end that he was dying of AIDS, something that fellow closet case Rock Hudson was brave enough to admit years before. And his piano-playing style sucked anyway.

I agree. Kudos for both.

“Too gay” for Hollywood. Boy, I didn’t see THAT one coming.

And after you make money out of ancillary markets

Jane, as always, you are right. PLus, think of the money to be made in candlabra sales alone.:-)

I ‘spose they will have to cut the Librerace Estate in for a %.

Took the kids to the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas when they were fairly young, on our way to the Grand Canyon. They LOVED it, as did Ms. ET. Now I find out it closed in 2010. This movie might help get impetus going to reopen it.

I play youtubes of Liberace for my Music Appreciation classes, and even for my advanced music theory class – explaining the Neapolitan 6th chord use in the Moonlight Sonata – what better way than to show Liberace spinning around on all those mirrors. He was a better pianist than is generally acknowledged, particularly his Chopin and some of his Liszt.

I think my dad was attracted to Liberace when I was a kid. He knew what was going on, but loved the TV program. Not as much as Lawrence Welk, though…

My parents used to watch his TV show. Som we watched it. ‘Course, back then, we didn’t know from “gay”. Strange, weird, unusual, yeah. BUt that guys was some entertainer. I don;t eve LIKE the damn piano. But, play it like he did…..unbelievable.

Michael Douglas (Above) could be his indentical twin brother.

Lastly, Truman Capote (movie)…OK? LIberace (movie)…too gay?

Beats the hell outta me.

Golly what a difference a generation or two makes. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Baptist and Methodist and Presbyterian ladies in my mom’s garden club in a South Carolina small town loved Liberace — twittery Southern womanhood kind of love.

Of course, that was the era in which the Kiwanis Club would produce as a fundraiser a “womanless wedding” without a qualm.

I suppose it was the last grand era of double-entendre.

Liberace was an absolutely fabulous pianist who could succeed in any of the piano genres — classical, jazz, schlock, or whatever. Not even Horowitz could have done all that .

Now, here’s a test! Who here can name Liberace’s favorite make of piano? Right now it’s 6:44 PM EST, and I’ll spill the beans in exactly one hour IF anyone guesses correctly.

Re: #15

Well, no takers. . .

It was a Baldwin piano.

Baldwin “. . .was founded in 1862 in Cincinnati by one Dwight Hamilton Baldwin, who introduced its first grand piano in 1895. Famous Baldwinites include Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Marian McPartland, Liberace and Dave Brubeck. I’d be in good company. Now owned by Gibson (as in guitars) and based in Nashville, the pianos are currently made—no surprise here—in China. . .”

Full article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323984704578207623525829966.html?KEYWORDS=piano#articleTabs%3Darticle

In Liberace’s day Baldwins were still built in the US. They competed with Steinway, and the old ones are still highly regarded.

I learned on a Baldwin but now have an old Chickering upright.

Can’t say that I listened to a lot of Liberace but everything I heard was more than a little over the top. Particularly his “double boogie woogie.”

I prefer Horowitz doing “Stars and Stripes Forever” or Chick Corea playing with the Harlem String Quartet.