Is Schnabel’s Palazzo Chupi in Crisis? Schay It Isn’t Scho!Is Julian Schnabel’s big, pink Palazzo Chupi in the West Village so sleepy that the doormen are giving tours to any old passerby? That and more blasphemous rumors from Sunnyside Gardens, Dumbo, and Park Slope in today’s boroughs report.
ByTim Murphy
photo op
Chupi Bathed in Celestial LightA miraculous event occurred in the West Village this weekend. There are two possible explanations.
company town
Tabloids Will Reportedly Pay $12 Million for Pictures of Brangelina TwinsThat’s a whole $8 million more than the couple got for Shiloh! Is it because there’s two of them or because of inflation? Plus: Citigroup’s seven-point plan for saving itself, the Palazzo Chupi triplex goes on sale, and other things that make you go hmmm, in our daily roundup of media, finance, real-estate and law news.
There Goes the SchneighborhoodRichard Gere has put his apartment in Julian Schnabel’s Palazzo Chupi on the market, private-equity execs come down to earth, Sam Zell continues to be wacky, and Jeff Zucker and Harvey Weinstein fight like a couple of queens over ‘Project Runway’ in our daily roundup of real-estate, finance, media and law news.
company town
NBC Throws a ChangeupThe Peacock network is the first to ditch the traditional notion of television “seasons.” That, and more news from the city’s media, finance, law and real-estate industries.
real estate porn
Schnabel Schleps Uptown, Hires Fancy Broker for Chupi
Well, someone is getting fancy. Julian Schnabel has hired Brown Harris Stevens, the hoity real-estate brokers that market big-time rich-people properties like 15 Central Park West, to sell the remaining units of his pink palace, the Palazzo Chupi (above). Sure, this makes sense, since the condos are in the range of $27–$32 million, but when we heard it we were a little disapointed, since it doesn’t really jibe with the Schnab’s bohemian, pajamas-wearing style. Except! Max Abelson over at Observer tells us the agents he picked are virtual neophytes: a sales associate named Debra Ortega, whose son his sons met at camp who has never actually had her own listing, and Paddington M. Zwigard, an agent who has never sold an apartment over $10 million, whom we imagine Schnabel chose for her awesome name. See, the Schnab is all about people and the feelings he gets from people, not stuffy stuff like credentials. “I think what he wants is a community that’s comparable to his lifestyle,” Ortega told the Observer, “someone he would feel keen about being neighbors with. I don’t think he’s going to judge if you’re a banker or artist or a top global realtor.” What about money? Does he judge you if you don’t have enough to actually buy in the Palazzo? Because that wouldn’t really jibe with his bohemian style, either. Maybe he should think about that and about the bloggers who really deserve to be in his community. We’re just saying.
Schnabel’s Palazzo Goes Mainstream With $59 M. in Broker Listings [NYO]
party lines
Madonna Explains Why She Schnubbed the ChupiBecause Daily Intel’s pursuit of all things Schnabel is not bound by geography or actually, gravity, we asked Berlin-based reporter Lawrence Ferber to corner Madonna at the Berlin Film Festival this week, where she was promoting the film she directed, Filth and Wisdom, and ask her why she had rejected the Chupi of our dreams. Here is his report:
“What a strange question!” Madonna laughed when we asked her about the Palazzo Chupi. So we laughed too, like “Ha-ha-ha-ha, we’re not psycho.” “How did you know that?” she asked. Er, we have our ways. Madge confirmed she had looked at the Chupi and decided not to move in. But not, it turned out, for fear of seeing a Schnaked Schnabel slipping into the swimming pool. “I love the house,” she explained. “But it’s not child-friendly, which is why I didn’t end up moving there.” Also, she was able to iron out the issues she was having with her co-op board at Harperly Hall. I bought the apartment upstairs, so now everything’s A-OK,” she said. She and Schnabel will continue to be friends. “I love [Julian],” she gushed. “He’s awesome.” We think so too! Maybe we can all be friends! Madge? —Lawrence Ferber
real estate porn
Palazzo Chupi Goes on the Market; Intel Editors SchwoonThis may be hard for you to believe since we at Intel are clearly deeply fulfilled by our work, but there are days when we say to ourselves, Selves? Why did we not go into investment banking? Because a life of pounding the pavement and speaking truth to power may be noble, but it’s not gonna get us to the Palazzo Chupi. Yes, today the remaining two units of Julian Schnabel’s pink West Village Palace, having been rejected by Bono, then by Madonna, went on the market. The views (river and harbor, from various terraces), amenities (pool, parking, access to the Schnabe), and schnabulous details (cast-bronze door handles, stone fireplaces, cast-stone railings, beamed ceilings, terra-cotta tile floors) put the price at $27 million (for the duplex) and $32 million (for the triplex). Our rudimentary math skills (another reason we’re not bankers) indicate that it will take us somewhere between 400 and 700 years to save up for our chunk of Chupi. Until then, we can only dream, and moon over the pictures after the jump.
cultural capital
Because He’s SchnabulousThe list of reasons why we love Julian Schnabel are many and varied — he is large and hairy, but has a funny Mickey Mouse voice; he constructed a large pink castle in the middle of the city and named it Palazzo Chupi; he can often be found in pajamas and sometimes a skirt; he has more progeny than we can keep track of; he appears to have no filter whatsoever. Perhaps most importantly, he is one of a diminishing number of personalities from an era when New York City, even on its worst days, felt like more than just a collection of Duane Reades and bank branches clustered on a chunk of concrete. And now we add to our list an exchange from the Daily Telegraph’s profile of the Schnab, which we have transcribed below.
Schnabel: I kid around a lot. I have a lot of fun. But most people don’t have a sense of humor.… And then I read in this other thing that I was name-dropping all the time. Well it just so happens that the people I know are famous. You know, they work in the movies with me. They’re my friends. It’s like if I said… What’s your name?
Reporter: (Thinks: My name? We have been talking for the past two hours.) Mick.
Schnabel: Mick what?
Reporter: Mick Brown.
Schnabel: Okay, so I could say I was talking to Mick Brown the other day — I might well say that. (His tone sounds doubtful.) But they might not know who Mick Brown is.
Reporter: (Thinks: Maybe they will after I become famous for murdering a famous artist/director.)
Julian Schnabel, Larging It [Daily Telegraph]
cultural capital
Julian Schnabel Is Numero Uno!So this weekend we finally read Andrew Corsello’s profile of Julian Schnabel in the current issue of GQ, in which the two gigantic personalities ride around the Hamptons in La Schnabe’s newly purchased 1975 Eldorado, eating and farting and picking at themselves. Other than not being online, much is wonderful about the piece, but our favorite part is the description of Schnabel’s tubby magnificence, which we’ve faithfully, and perhaps illegally, transcribed for your pleasure:
I only now register the absurdity of what he’s wearing: Slippers, a blue-and-gray checked wraparound skirt that may or may not be a old tablecloth, and a grubby white vest, unbuttoned, that may or may not be Naugahyde and may or may not have been part of a three-piece suit worn by Don Johnson in a Miami Vice episode. His belly, ample, ruddy with sun, parts and displaces the flaps of the vest so that they hang to the sides, putting on glorious display the salt-and-pepper Afghans that are his chest and back hair. Look at him, the bear on the outside and the satyr on the inside. Is this a man capable of making a movie with the word butterfly in the title? The look of a man capable of making a movie as powerful as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — powerful not only in the sense of exalted emotions, but in the way it takes your assumptions about what movies are for, assumptions so fundamental you aren’t even aware you have them, and turns them inside out? No. This is the look of a man living off the dregs of a modest fortune made in the 1970s publishing a magazine called Heavy Shaggin’
developing
Will Madonna’s Co-op Board Push Her Love Over the Borderline?Madonna managed to get something else done this week while she was in town for the premiere of Guy Ritchie’s movie, Revolver. She filed suit against her Central Park West building’s co-op board, saying they blocked her from buying a neighbor’s apartment, which she had been planning to adjoin to her current 6,000-square-foot spread. (Hey, a girl needs room!) We imagine she feels the old biddies on the board should be grateful for her presence: After all, her building, Harperley Hall, 41 Central Park West, “was not one of the area’s more notable buildings until she put down roots there in the early 1990’s,” the Times said in 2003, noting that after her arrival, property prices had gone up by about 25 percent. Madge has had bad luck with co-ops before — she was rejected by the San Remo in 1985 — and was looking at townhouses earlier this year. “I believe she’s looking on the Upper East Side,” publicist Liz Rosenberg told New York back in March. Could this be the conflict that pushes Madge out of the Upper West Side for good? If so, we have two words for her: Palazzo. Chupi.
Madonna Sues Co-op Board [NYP]
There Goes the Nabe: Up, Up, Up [NYT]
Related: Madonna’s Condo Ray of Light [NYM]
developing
‘Schneighbors’ No More?Friends, we have sad news. Last night at the GQ Man of the Year awards in Los Angeles, a member of Intel’s West Coast bureau — okay, fine, kidding, we don’t have a West Coast bureau; it was a USC journalism student named David Davin — intercepted auteur and art legend Julian Schnabel and asked him, quakingly, about his West Village development, Palazzo Chupi. Occupied by Schnabel, Richard Gere, and Credit Suisse cheese William J.B. Brady, the ginormous pink building is not only a monument to midlife crisis, it’s the set of Intel’s favorite (pretend) reality show, Schneighbors, which is why we were so excited when we heard that Bono had bought one of the two remaining condos. But we couldn’t find any records of the sale, so did he? “No, Bono is not going to be there,” Schnabel said. He was wearing green sneakers, a bathrobe, and yellow-tinted glasses, and as he shuffled away he seemed oblivious to the fact that, 3,000 miles away, our hearts were shattering into a million pieces. But then we looked on the bright side: Could not Bono’s loss be Salman Rushdie’s gain?
Related: Look Who’s Schneighbors!
in other news
When Bono Met BloombergYesterday Bono and Mayor Bloomberg met to talk about what philanthropic and civic projects they could team up on. The meeting went well, according to Bono, who told the AP that he thought he and Bloomberg could make beautiful music together. “I think [Bloomberg] could do an awful lot of good,” he said. But it’s not just Bloomberg’s money, or his power, or his soft, soft skin that draws Bono to him. He likes him for him.
“What I’m interested in is not just his cash, but his intellect, and how his business acumen could be used to work for the world’s poor.”
We think this sounds like the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Maybe Bloomberg will, like Bono, move into Julian Schnabel’s big pink castle and join the cast of Schneighbors!
Bono and Bloomberg Could Harmonize On Helping the Poor [NYS]
Earlier: Look Who’s Schneighbors!
multiple choice
Look Who’s Schneighbors!Let the speculation cease! The Wall Street Journal today reports that Richard Gere has in fact purchased a condo in Julian Schnabel’s building — 18,500 square feet of space with double-height ceilings, six-foot tall fireplaces, and earthenware or marble bathtub. And the other day, The Villager reported that Bono bought a penthouse in the big pink building. If this is true, the Palazzo has just usurped the Dakota as the residence for aging baby-boomers in the entertainment industry. In fact, we suggest that the people at VH1 begin crafting a proposal for a reality show posthaste. Just think: long, drunken dinner parties with the Dalai Lama, visits from Trudi and Sting. Bono will get pissed when Julian borrows his leather pants and returns them all stretched out, and every day they’ll do yoga around the communal pool —with a hot young instructor that Richard and Bono fight over. Wow. We can already see Julian, shirtless, in downward dog. But hold on: There are two other apartments left in the Palazzo!
