I’ve solely been sitting with Baz Luhrmann for 5 minutes when he will get the concept for a efficiency. The script? A monologue, written by him, concerning the mysterious fictional hang-out of a person named Monsieur. The stage? His new East Village bar, nonetheless beneath building, named—you guessed it—Monsieur. The actor? Jon Neidich, CEO of Golden Age Hospitality and his enterprise companion. And motion!
“Tucked contained in the medieval lair of its namesake, this bar as soon as belonged to a part-time poet and full-time enfant horrible who was a fixture of the East Village celebration scene again within the late ’60s and early ’70s, identified solely as Monsieur,” Neidich begins slowly. “He was a wonderful trickster, a person who made fiction really feel extra truthful than reality, and all the time regarded like he simply stepped out of his personal self-portrait, accompanied by his beloved pet chimp and co-conspirator, Thibault.”
Then, he picks up the tempo. “Their soireés had been the stuff of legend, a spot the place nobody belonged, the place you might rub shoulders with the gorgeous, the damned, and the doomed. As the 2 moved via the scenes like a pair of tragic jesters, delighting the wide-eyed and annoying the cynics. Even now, you possibly can nearly hear their laughter, religion, however insistent, like a file caught on the most effective a part of the track.”
Luhrmann smiles as Neidich finishes. “That’s our character—that’s Monsieur!” he provides.
