Gorenstein shares Minnelli’s compact stature and wears a studious-looking pair of round spectacles. “I will always consider it my duty to look out for her,” he said. For more than a decade, Gorenstein worked as Minnelli’s press representative, and he told me that he still can’t resist doing unofficial publicity for her. (See, for instance, the quippy Lucille Bluth clips that lit up the Internet after Liza outlived her “Arrested Development” co-star Jessica Walter, in March.) But when I got in touch I found someone different: Scott Gorenstein, a soft-spoken, middle-aged man who is not only a dyed-in-the-wool, lifelong Minnelli superfan but also her former employee. I figured that the person behind would be some Very Online millennial feeding social media’s appetite for the matriarch as meme-a form of homage that is dynamite for clicks but doesn’t always do its subjects justice. The account was like a Twitter version of the famous “Follies” lyrics: “Good times and bum times, I’ve seen them all / And, my dear, I’m still here.”
The message was clear: old structures are crumbling, yet Liza persists, a bedazzled Energizer Bunny running on gusto and guile. It noted when Minnelli outlived the television program “Cops,” Mitch McConnell’s control of the Senate, the ban on transgender people serving openly in the military, and Scott Atlas’s employment as Trump’s special adviser on COVID-19. Wasn’t it glib, or even ghoulish, to celebrate the survival of one woman in the face of so many casualties? At the same time, had a sly way of commenting on the times. The updates, which came once or sometimes twice a day, sounded overly triumphant at a time when the coronavirus was claiming thousands of American lives every day. They posted news of celebrity passings faster than some obituary sections and always seemed to have the scoop on divorces and bankruptcies.
#Liza minelli. update#
(Smith died in 2017, so Minnelli has outlived her, too.)Īll of these testaments to Minnelli’s longevity come courtesy of a Twitter account called which sprang into existence, in February of 2020, with the declaration that “Liza Minnelli outlived the marriage of Jon Peters and Pamela Anderson.” I first became aware of the account a few months later, when someone I follow retweeted the update “Liza Minnelli has outlived Disney’s ‘Frozen,’ which will not reopen on Broadway.” With that news item and many others, whoever was running the account revealed themselves to be remarkably quick on the draw. She has outlived the Pacific Theatres and ArcLight Cinemas, Century 21, the search for Lady Gaga’s kidnapped French bulldogs, and the Manhattan restaurateur Sirio Maccioni, at whose now-defunct French eatery Le Cirque she once performed an impromptu version of “New York, New York,” during the birthday party of the gossip columnist Liz Smith. She has outlived Queen Elizabeth II’s dachshund-corgi mix, Vulcan, and the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip. She has outlived Larry King, Mary-Kate Olsen’s marriage, and the blockage of the Suez Canal. In the past year alone, Liza Minnelli has outlived the Copacabana, Christopher Plummer, and Robert F.
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