7/25/2023 0 Comments Liza minelli in halston![]() ![]() I was very adamant that I want final cut, so even though we worked with great partners at CNN and Amazon, they never told us what to do and we were able to make it on our own and say what we want to say. ![]() It was part of the agreement from the beginning. Leslie Frowick saw the film one week before Sundance. We had no one breathing down our neck at all. We also got to see documents that no one had seen before given to us by the business and legal people on both sides of the Halston dilemma, both from his attorney and also the business people from his camp and also the ones from the ESMARK camp.Ĥ8 HILLS How impartial can you be in your portrayal of Halston with the family involved?įRÉDÉRIC TCHENG I can be totally unbiased. ROLAND BALLESTER Not only did we have a lot of access to the personal side but also to the business side. Halston’s niece, Lesley Frowick, whom Roland had personal contact with-she had written a book and was now interested in collaborating on a film with Roland-opened up a completely different side of Halston, the personal side, the family side and that made a huge difference to me as a filmmaker. I had this idea that he was just a one-dimensional guy that was out at Studio 54 and it was all about the drugs and partying, and that’s what those projects have focused on, unfortunately. How would you make yours different?įRÉDÉRIC TCHENG When I first met Roland, I was a little bit on the fence because of these other portraits of Halston that were out in the world. ![]() I spoke to Tcheng and producer Roland Ballester about uncovering the man behind the sunglasses, the legal battles that tore his company apart, his time in San Francisco, and why he should be remembered as an LGBTQ trailblazer.Ĥ8 HILLS There have been other Halston documentaries on TV and the silver screen. Thankfully, Halston had previously made copies of the tapes, many of which serve as the basis for the documentary, along with rare archival footage and interviews with the designer’s family, friends, and collaborators including Liza Minelli, Pat Cleveland, Elsa Peretti, Naeem Khan, and Marissa Berenson. Many of those close to Halston saw the move as a blatant attempt to erase the memory of the creative genius who put the pillbox hat on Jacqueline Kennedy before rising to international fame in the 1970s with his unstructured dress designs that moved with his clientele’s bodies and becoming “the most successful single individual in the history of American fashion,” according to talk show host Phil Donohue. Carl Epstein and others have said it was a business decision, but Carl was just trying to humiliate him.” “They erased the tapes to make blank tapes to sell to the next tenant, which is ridiculous. “The dresses were sold in a fire sale, so now it’s hard for any museum to have a substantial collection because it’s all here and there,” Tcheng mourned. In Halston, the new biopic about the visionary American fashion designer, director Frédéric Tcheng makes every effort to remain objective when portraying the contentious legal battle between Halston and his parent company, ESMARK.īut it was impossible for the Dior and I and Valentino: The Last Emperor director to maintain total impartiality when he described to 48 Hills the gross degradations that the mega-corporation perpetrated against Halston-selling off his precious dress samples and erasing all of his videotapes, full of rare archival footage, after firing him for insubordination. ![]()
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