Almost at the same time that she launched the sequel to her much-loved Halloween movie Hocus Pocus last week, Bette Midler walked into a very modern witch hunt.
The Hollywood legend has been tweeting copiously about America’s rollback of female rights on abortion. A lifelong committed liberal, she wrote that she was unhappy that the rights of women were being erased by some strands of the left too, with the word “woman” often being removed because of pressure from extremist ends of the trans rights movement.
“Women of the world! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name!” she wrote. “They don’t call us ‘women’ any more; they call us ‘birthing people’ or ‘menstruators’, and even ‘people with vaginas’! Don’t let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!”
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Bette Midler (Photo by Getty Images)
While Bette is regarded as an icon in the LGBT world for always championing gay rights from the start of her career, this wasn’t enough to stop her being attacked mercilessly by people who demanded that she “rethink” her point of view, calling her a bigot and saying she needed to retract otherwise she’d find Hocus Pocus 2 being boycotted.
Ms Midler, 76, insisted she wasn’t being transphobic but simply standing up for women’s rights.
“I’ve fought for marginalised people for as long as I can remember,” she wrote. “Still, if you want to dismiss my 60 years of proven love and concern over a tweet that accidentally angered the very people I have always supported and adored, so be it.”
...and the Bratlash
All things 1980s are back in vogue thanks to the success of Stranger Things and it was, I have to admit, a particular dream come true for me to chat to the biggest screen bad boy of the era, The Breakfast Club’s Judd Nelson.
In real-life, the actor, who stars in a new movie about teen rebellion, Iceland is Best (which is finally being released on streamers after being held back by the pandemic), is a sweetie, a nice Jewish boy, the son of two lawyers.
Judd has managed to maintain a steady career, working consistently over the years, but he tells me the label “The Brat Pack”, about a group of his fellow young teen actors who starred in films including The Breakfast Club and St Elmo’s Fire, had a severe impact on the ambitions of both him and his friends.
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Judd Nelson attending the premiere of Sony Pictures Classic's "David Crosby: Remember My Name" at Linwood Dunn Theater on July 18, 2019 in Los Angeles, California (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images)
“I feel like we’ve all outlasted or outlived the derogatory ‘Brat Pack’ notion but I still feel unhappy about it, it’s a shame,” he says. “It started with an article in New York Magazine and we were portrayed unfairly as entitled and rebellious. People see it now as a term of endearment, which is bizarre.
“We were all good friends but because of the label we were encouraged not to work with each other or even hang out together. My experience of working with those people was that we were all professional, prepared, on time, knew our lines, hit our marks. But that one article played right into people’s worst notion of what we might be like. People just accepted it as the truth.
“It was very costly to us because if you were a writer or a director you thought, ‘why would I want to work with people like that?’ This opinion gathered momentum and before we knew it, it was fact and no one was held accountable. But I can’t get angry about it. My mum always says, ‘if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’. Slings and arrows are part of the job and you just have to deal with it.”
Ruby zaps the blues
Ruby Wax has used a pioneering new technique to shift her depression and she wants all of us to know about it.
The comic and interviewer is shouting about the wonders of a new technology called rTMS (repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation).
“If you would have told me five years ago something like it existed, I’d think you had watched too much sci-fi,” she wrote on her Instagram page. The technique uses a magnetic pulse which works through a helmet and “whacks your neurons into action like rebooting a stalled car”. She adds: “I’m almost human again. I can almost smile, which is an impossibility during the dark nights of the mental knives.”
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Ruby Wax (Photo by Getty Images)
Jews in the news
I was sad to see Rachel Stevens has announced the end of her marriage to childhood sweetheart Alex Bourne. The pair, who have two daughters together, had been married for nearly 13 years. I’ve interviewed Rachel many times and she’s one of the sweetest people in showbiz.
The ridiculously stunning Zoe Kravitz has just signed to star in an exciting female-focused new drama called The Sundance Kid Might Have Some Regrets. It’s old-fashioned heist meets the mania of superheroes as the story follows bank-robbing twins, one of whom possesses supernatural powers.
Pickled cucumbers are certainly a favourite for many Ashkenazi Jews but Stacey Solomon has always taken her love of the green stuff that bit further. The £1.2million home she shares with fiancé Joe Swash is called Pickle Cottage and last week the reality star was dressed up as a giant pickle by her friends for her hen do.
Meanwhile, hot shot New Zealand director Taika Waititi appears to be moving over to the UK with new fiancée Rita Ora. The couple was recently seen shopping near her £8million mansion and a wedding is set to be in the offing for later this summer.
