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Appearances > 2012 > “Gossip Girl” 100th Episode Celebration with Mayor Bloomberg – January 26

Happy Gossip Girl Day, everyone! Yes, that exists now.

To mark the occasion, made official this morning by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a ceremony on the Gossip Girl set in Queens, N.Y., EW caught up with executive producers Stephanie Savage and Josh Safran to get the intel on Monday’s 100th episode of Gossip Girl.

Now, much has already been said about the episode. It’s Blair’s wedding day, Georgina’s back, and there are love triangles upon love triangles about to come to a head. But arguably one of the episode’s most important moments, says Safran, has yet to be spoiled. (He checks online!) “You have to see [the last few minutes] to believe them. I really think they will take people’s breath away,” he says. “Someone asked on Twitter, ‘Will we smile or cry at the end of the episode?’ And I said, ‘It will be more like a gasp.’”

Elaborating, while still playfully coy, Savage explains that the final moment was something that “had to happen” in the 100th episode. “That’s one of the fun things about having a mature show in season 5, you feel like you can really have some fun. In the first couple of seasons, you feel like you have to keep certain things very guarded and protected because the hope is that you’ll have to make them last a long time,” she says. Safran adds: “What we can say is that why we made that decision will become clear with future episodes because, obviously, you’ll learn more about why that has happened, how that has happened. You see, it was such an easy decision… It wasn’t something we belabored over or had long discussions about. It really wasn’t.”

A more contested issue, as Safran has told EW before, was the outcome of the love entanglements (Chuck and Blair, Dan and Serena, Dan and Blair, Blair and Louis…), something fans will get a taste of in Monday’s episode. “Well, obviously [the end] changes things. And what happens in the episode for Blair, Dan, Chuck, and Serena will become a whole new world for them. Obviously, we pushed the 100th episode as a special episode — a huge wedding, a royal wedding — but it’s also the 13th episode of the season. So, the season arc does continue,” says Safran. “The 100th is a turning point, but it’s a turning point connected to everything that was happening before.”

While the episode set to air will certainly have big moments for the characters, off screen the showrunner duo found themselves thinking long ago about the turning point that led to their big moment today. Before Gossip Girl had filmed a single frame, the pair recalls being shown a small soundstage in Los Angeles and were told it was where they’d film their show. Looking at the diminutive space, they knew even then that it’d never work. “I don’t know if we would have ended up making the show if we didn’t know we were making something we were proud of,” Savage reflects, “and something that reflected the vision we had from the beginning, which was very much about shooting on location in New York.” Creating iconic Gossip Girl images — say, for example, the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where much of season 1 took place, would have been impossible. “Oh my gosh, we would have have to find something in, like, Toronto,” laughs Safran, as Savage adds, “like the steps of the CN tower!”

Source

Thanks to @ChandlerDillon!

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Movies > Greetings from Tim Buckley > Stills

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Gossip Girl > Season 5 > Screen Captures > 5×12 – Father and the Bride

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Gossip Girl > Season 5 > Screen Captures > 5×11 – The End of The Affair?

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Candids > 2012 > Leaving a Used Bookstore – January 7

Happy Holidays to all our PBW visitors! =)

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Spending the Holidays in Miami – December 23, 2011

Thanks to @ChanderDillon for these!

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Photoshoots > Nylon Guys

It was Radical Chic redux. This week, the Bagger stopped by an event organized by a slew of New York scenesters and hot young things — including Alexa Chung, the MTV host turned designer; the photographer Aaron Stern; Zoe Kravitz, the young actress, and her boyfriend, Penn Badgley, a star of “Gossip Girl” and “Margin Call” — in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was held at the swank Bowery Hotel, in a space normally reserved for Strokes afterparties and other downtown bacchanals. There were doormen and bowtied waiters (but no open bar).

Read more HERE (thanks to @Rali55)

Thanks to @ChandlerDillon!

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Photoshoots > 2011 > Chih-Kai Shih

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Appearances > 2011 > Rocked: An Exclusive Photography Exhibition By Mick Rock – December 7, 2011

Last night, a mishmash of impassioned celebs including Alexa Chung, Zoe Kravitz, Olivia Wilde, Parker Posey, Darren Aronofsky and Michael Stipe came together at the Bowery Hotel to hear poets, authors, bands, protesters and Mos Def (who read from a lengthy manuscript and kept stopping to apologize to the audience) wax on about Occupy Wall Street. Though there was a good-sized turnout, the crowd had difficulty focusing at times, talking over many of the speakers to annoyed shushing. Daphne Guinness didn’t help matters much when she slunk in late in a head-turning Tron-esque outfit, prompting about a dozen people in the crowd to stop listening and rush over to the socialite fashion plate.

Although Kravitz kindly told us we were unlikely to get an interview from any of her fellow celebrity hosts, who included Chung, Daniel Kruglikov and Tennessee Thomas among others, we were able to get a hold of her boyfriend Penn Badgley (who co-MCd the evening with Kravitz and recently starred in the the well-received Margin Call, about the early days of the financial crisis). He happily spoke to us about his feelings on OWS, the soiree itself, and where we all fit in.

What would you say the point of tonight is?

I think what all of us wanted to do was encourage what we believe is already a growing awareness among people who would normally feel a little intimidated by something like Occupy, because we are, as many people have said, closer to the 1% than any of the 99%. But we want to have a forum for the kind of honest, productive conversation — if it’s to be had at all — to see what we can do.

A lot of people here aren’t even listening to the speakers — I’ve seen a lot of ‘shushing’ going on.

People often roll their eyes at the notion that you can do anything great or affect change at any capacity, and that’s true in a lot of ways. But if that’s ever going to happen, everyone has to start talking about it. To speak to the Occupy movement, if the 99% is going to get what they want from the 1%, they all have to represent themselves. They can’t be represented by 40,000 people marching every month, they can’t be represented simply by people occupying their foreclosed homes, they can’t be represented by people agreeing with things that people say — they have to say and do things themselves.

Were you concerned that tonight might come off as being a little preachy?

We don’t want to indoctrinate anyone — we want people to figure it what they’re doing here for themselves. And I know a lot of people are like “Shut the fuck up, you’re on Gossip Girl!” But…

Are you in the 1%?

I’m not. I could go into the details of how I’m not a 1%, but the truth is I’m not. And it doesn’t matter either way. The financial crisis is a symptom of the larger human crisis, and eventually we’re not just 99%, we’re 100%.

So it’s a universal issue.

This is a species-wide human crisis that we’re facing; it’s not just simply economic. I believe that most people who are here have been here before — it’s a beautiful space. But how often have we engaged in this kind of conversation for this long, while maintaining at least a modicum of interest? And if that’s all we accomplish, like, shit, that’s a beginning.

But you guys aren’t saying you’re all-knowing.

We don’t pretend to have any answers, we don’t pretend to have any better ideas — we probably have less of them then anyone in Zucotti, but we want to use whatever attention we have to push it their way — to push it in any direction. Again, I know it sounds idealistic and naïve, but we are eventually gonna have to ask ourselves what role we play in any of our communities. And if you don’t have an answer to that, then you’re not participating, and I believe we’ve gotten to this point where you can’t exist independently from your community. As a survival instinct, we’re eventually gonna have to overcome our own self-interests and work together.

Source, thanks to @Rali55 for the link!