We hope Mr. Willis has a more pleasurable stay at the El Dorado than he had at Nakatomi Plaza.

Last time Bruce Willis tangled with a tower, his Die Hard character escaped from the clutches of a German terrorist group with only his trusty Beretta sidearm. We hope his stay at El Dorado at 300 Central Park West, where he just picked up a co-op apartment, is less eventful.

The four-bedroom spread was rumored to be in contract for $8 million, according to New York Post, but as in The Sixth Sense, there's a twist at the end of this purchase: Mr. Willis and wife Emma ended up paying $8.85 million for the fourth-floor unit, according to city records—a bit over the asking price of $8.695 million. (Even celebrities, it seems, can't buy a co-op without listing their name on the need! Or maybe they just wanted the tax abatement?)

Speaking of the asking price, you know a celebrity buy has serious wattage when the seller, U2 bassist Adam Clayton, barely even gets mentioned. But Mr. Clayton is indeed the seller—perhaps he's following U2 frontman Bono down the street to the San Remo?

Meanwhile, back al Dorado, the Willises will be making their home in a fourth-floor unit, once broken up into two rental apartments but recombined to its former glory by Mr. Clayton in the '90s. Mr. Willis's new apartment apartment features a 38-foot formal gallery—"ideal for exhibiting art," according to the listing, held by Halstead brokers Emma and Michael Kerins. Or sitting in your underwear and getting into flamewars on the internet, as the case may be for Mr. Willis.

The original floor plan included four bedrooms, though as the unit is currently configured it features just three—but these are no ordinary bedrooms, with each containing a walk-in closet and en-suite bath. The master is situated in the corner, with both a view of the park (though the fourth-floor unit isn't quite above the tree line) and a south-facing view. Dying hard is exciting and all, but there's nothing like a good night's sleep.

Alicia Keys eyes the Edun collection. (PMc)

It’s not every day that you discover a makeshift organic fruit and cider farmer’s market stand outside a fashion show. But that’s precisely what had been constructed outside Skylight at Moynihan Station at EDUN’s spring 2013 runway presentation this past Saturday afternoon. Breezy Hill Orchards of Staatsburg, New York was stocked with the dozens of varietals of pears and apples freshly picked. Before the show, sweaty fashion editors, stylists and buyers could take a refreshing sip of apple cider. It was a smart pairing considering that Edun, which was founded by Ali Hewson and U2’s Bono, works with African manufacturers to give them an economic boost. Naturally the majority of attendees beelined it to their seats, but The Observer gulped down a bottle before the show.

Seating was a bit frenzied and the arrival of songstress Alicia Keys didn’t help, but eventually we took in the Mali and safari-chic theme of Edun creative director Sharon Wauchob’s collection, with etched florals, mud-dyed cotton and silk and military accents.

"At Edun we believe that real style has substance. We founded the company to bring trade to Africa,” explained Ms. Hewson. “This season we are proud to say we are on track to reach our goal of producing 40 percent of the collection in Africa."

Commerce-for-developing-nations-mission accomplished.

"We [EDUN] loved the idea of working with an organic farmer's market stand. We wanted to do it last season, but the weather was so harsh the day of our show!” Ms. Hewson told The Observer afterward.

“September is the perfect time to enjoy the fruits of our surrounding farming community and of course, in EDUN, apples are close to our hearts.”

To The Observer’s chagrin, once it became apparent that everything at the farm stand was gratis, the crowd dove like hawks attacking prey. Grabbing bags of apples and even scarfing down homemade doughnuts. It’s a rare sighting to behold the fashion frenzy nibble even raw almonds or a Fiber One bar, but doughnuts? Impressive!

Ms. Judd

Ashley Judd broke from the selling of maternal wrath and vengeance—the primary plot-drivers of her new prime-time spy caper, Missing—to visit the UN last week and discuss her celebrity recovery and humanitarianism memoir, All That Is Bitter and Sweet.

It describes a youth marred by rape and abuse, an adulthood plagued by thoughts of suicide, paralyzing depression and pervasive hopelessness. And the path of healing that led her to work on behalf of such sufferers of the Global South as Congolese rape victims, Cambodian orphans and Bangladeshi sex slaves.

“I believe the patriarchy is not men,” Ms. Judd told her eager audience. “Patriarchy is a system in which both men and women participate.”

The crowd of more than a hundred might have populated the pages of a wildly dishonest social studies text: Women from distant lands with heads wrapped in exotic textiles, a girl with Down syndrome upon whom you couldn’t help wrongly projecting massive innocence, a sexually harmless priest and a Jewish grandmother with the accent of a lost neighborhood. A majority were women, with just enough nonthreatening men for each nonthreatening man to feel himself not threatened.

They came for the slow-dripping sweet stuff of First World stardom meeting Third World woe. They listened like unwitting adherents of a new religion as Ms. Judd discussed helping women heal from sexual violence and shame.

“It’s a very dynamic form of psychotherapy in which the individual is able to safely recreate a moment of violence and trauma and fight back and move that experience out of the body,” she explained. “Out of the neuroanatomical pathways of the brain and reclaim their personal power.”

But as Ashley Judd the humanitarian shared sexual catharsis at the UN, Ashley Judd the Clinton-era screen siren was suffering deeply online.

“What’s Up With Ashley Judd’s Face?” tweeted Trevor O’Sullivan, referencing an appearance made by the actress and her cockapoo, Buttermilk, on Canadian television earlier in the week.

Viewers had noted a pneumatic plumpness about her cheeks—an aesthetic known to amateur online celebrity plastic surgery conjecturers as “pillowyness.”

“Like Lindsay Lohan,” said Us Weekly, “the star might be using injectable fillers in an attempt to look as youthful as possible for her big career comeback.”

“Ashley Judd’s new face makes me so sad,” tweeted Marisa Roffman.

Does a beautiful middle aged woman’s decision to inject herself full of chemicals to appear younger on television count as female empowerment, or submission to mass misogyny? Would a public denial of such self-maiming be further empowering, or another bow to the violent patriarchy that, we’d all just learned, is not about just men but men and women? Sometimes it’s hard to not to cry.

But at the UN Ms. Judd was not a faltering screen goddess. She was, rather, a living celebrity saint, Ashley of Malibu, who had touched the flesh of even greater members of the canon; Ms. Judd’s interviewer now asked about her mentors, yes, Bono and Desmond Tutu.

“I’ve learned a lot from Father Tutu,” she said. “He has taught me it’s O.K. to be sloppily imperfect in this world. He’ll use scripture with me when I’m, you know, in Bukavu with a fistula repair surgery amongst a woman who’s on her third or fourth attempt and the surgeons are washing up with bar soap from the river water that’s pulled from pails and the electricity keeps going off. I mean, you know, that in itself is a beautiful scene.”

The tale of an unknown woman’s protracted agony passed as a visualization across the conference room, horror converted to texture by Ms. Judd’s anesthetizing Merchant-Ivory finish. People let out very faint sighs, imagining themselves on this very river in darkest Congo, fighting greatest evil with pure sentiment.

“Jesus and God are willfully self-constrained,” informed Ms. Judd, sharing Former Archbishop Tutu’s circularity of divine indifference. “Powerfully powerless.”

And heads bobbed in deep appreciation of the existential souvenir.

Meanwhile Ms. Judd’s publicist, Cara Tripicchio, was moving against the fast-spreading facial-filler meme with her own counter-meme—that of a noble woman’s struggle against a viral sinus infection and face-swelling steroids.

“Ashley has been battling an ongoing, serious sinus infection and flu,” Ms. Tripicchio told E! News. “Ashley is a natural beauty enjoying her 40s gracefully.”

But even at the UN there was an undeniable pillowyness, a frozenness about the eyes.

“I did a grief group recently,” said Ms. Judd. “It’s not easy but it is so worth it. Just an average year of living, the little hurts that accrue, the losses that we sustain, the jabs that we take. And I ended up doing some of my mother’s grief from when she was an unwed teenage girl and her baby brother was dying of cancer and it’s—”

The girl with Down syndrome (so innocent it hurt) was grinning at a joke she’d told herself while playing with her necklace as, in the front row, an elderly woman exercised her right to impromptu napping. We moved into Q&A, where Ms. Judd was asked if all this very selfless and beautiful and taxing humanitarian work had left her in any way scarred.

“It’s a big scar,” she admitted. “And the challenge and the gift is to let it heal enough so that I can function well but not to let it heal all the way, lest I forget.”

“Well, thank you, Ashley,” said the UN interviewer, “At 8 p.m. Eastern time on ABC Missing will be on the air, Ashley’s new series where she plays a powerful former CIA operative-turned-florist brought back in the game.”

And the grandmothers and the sexually harmless priest and the nonthreatening men and the women with heads wrapped in exotic textiles—but not the girl with Down syndrome—they all smiled like, “Boy, that’s quite an idea for a show.”

Julie Taymor and Bono (Getty Images)

Recently, the public got its hands on the 35-page complaint that Julie Taymor and her company LOH Inc. filed in response to the countersuit launched by the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

To catch up: Ms. Taymor sued the producers of the show for using her material after firing her, won a ton of money, but is still suing them for more money. The defendants in the case -- 8 Legged Productions, LLC, Hello Entertainment LLC, Goodbye Entertainment LLC, Michael Cohl, Glen Berger, Jeremiah Harris, and Savior Productions LLC -- include the producers who recently launched the countersuit, claiming that Ms. Taymor's detrimental influence on the production hurt the show and cost them money. Also, her co-author for the book, Glen Berger. Back and forth, forever and ever.

While we're waiting for this mess to get untangled (spider web pun!) in court, Ms. Taymor's complaint contains enough juicy dirt on show creator Bono and his cohorts to keep us entertained for the rest of the week. Here are the 10 most soap opera moments from the document, so you don't have to slog through the paperwork yourself.

1. Julie Taymor is a genius, says co-author.
In a private e-mail correspondence, the book's co-author Glen Berger effusively gushed to Ms. Taymor about what an honor it was to work with such a brilliant auteur.

i’ve been meaning to point this out for a while, but today, as people could sense something alchemical was going on in how the story was working—it’s—your directing and designing on this thing aside—your understanding of theatre has enabled you to
create a profoundly effective story. yeah, I wrote more of the words in the script, but the beat-to-beat narrative—that was totally your vision (I was your boy wonder) – and by figuring how to send the audience high, then plunging them low immediately after, then sending them high again, and on and on—well,anyway, just a few hundred hurdles to go, so I won't get into it...it seems to work on the audience on a physiological level—putting them in a state where they're wholly open—prepared to engage in the story on a deep deep emotional level...(Emphasis added) but just wanted to say what a gift, what a mind-cracking, heart-swelling gift it’s been having these front-row tickets to you....

2. Mr. Berger later changed his mind and went behind her back to help develop the nefarious-sounding Plan X in an attempt to change the show to make it more coherent, which is bitchy but we're pretty sure is not illegal.

As the series of unforseen events unfolded, Berger and Tsypin apparently began privately to discuss a plan to re-write the Book of the Musical such that, among other things, the culmination of the current Act I—a dramatic fight scene between Spider-Man and the villain Green Goblin—would move to the end of Act II. Berger called this plan “Plan X.”212.

Among other things, and unbeknownst to Taymor, Plan X appears to have been conceived as a way to avoid the technical challenges Tsypin and his team were having with staging the finale called for by the Book of the Musical co-authored by Taymor.

3. Bono, Mr. Kohl, and Mr. Berger all emailed each other about the problems with the show! Without CC'ing Ms. Taymor!

On December 29, 2010, for example, Berger sent an e-mail to Tsypin stating that it was “best not to mention anything to J.” Tsypin responded: “I won’t say a word.”

Upon information and belief, Berger and Tsypin, without Taymor’s knowledge,then reached out secretly to Cohl, Harris, Bono, and Edge in an effort to further their clandestine plan. To this end, Berger and Tsypin apparently sent e-mails to Cohl and Harris describing their plan and imploring the producers to “please don’t let JT know I’m sending this.

4. Bono et. all were going to come clean to the director about the changes in a meeting set in a hotel room at night (where most meetings take place), only to show up drunk with super models. Come on, Bono was just trying to lighten the mood!

Upon information and belief, on January 13, 2011, Cohl, Berger, and Bono met with Taymor in the VIP room of the Foxwoods Theater. Unbeknownst to Taymor, Berger apparently understood that the purpose of the meeting was to finally disclose Plan X to Taymor. As Berger recounted in a later e-mail, however, “that meeting never happened”:

[t]he meeting was postponed until 11 p.m., when Bono was going to show up –except he showed up in our room with Christy Turlington and a couple other supermodels, and he had already had a few beers, rendering him useless — so the producers postponed the meeting till the next afternoon–but that meeting never happened.

(More importantly, since when does a "few beers" render an Irishman useless? And Christy Turlington isn't just any old floozy...she probably lent some actual class to the proceedings.)

5. Apparently, Turn of the Dark actually got some great early reviews...but no one read them because they were too busy focusing on how cast members were being put in mortal danger.

On February 7, 2011, critics published pre-emptive reviews of the Musical five weeks before the then-scheduled opening night of March 15. While some of the reviews contained criticism of the show, those that praised it praised elements that had been conceived and implemented largely by Taymor: “As a stager . . . Taymor is bold, elegant, and eloquent”;“The flying is thrilling, a full-tilt leap into the extraordinary”; “‘Spider-Man’ deftly spins substance and spectacle”; “The state-of-the-art visuals can be stunning”; “Taymor delivers”; “A visual feast.”

6. And the stuff that wasn't even reviewed?? Even better.

By many accounts, the version of the Musical as it was being performed in late February 2011—which version was never reviewed by the press—had greatly improved since the version that had been reviewed by the press at the beginning of February 2011.247.

On February 18, 2011, for example, Glenn Orsher, Cohl’s Executive Producer,sent an e-mail to Taymor stating: “Wow! What a great show!

7. Even after she was fired, the press was (apparently) still applauding Ms. Taymor, despite the producer's claims that the show was entirely revamped. (Though she's still listed as the author of Spider-Man's book.)

Rather Taymor’s substantial creative contributions to the Musical, including her work as co-author of the Book, remain an integral part of the Musical and a substantial reason for its success. The myriad press reviews of the revised Musical that the producers have touted on the Musical’s website promoting the show confirm this: “A fun, high-flying adventure”; “There's more flying than ever-And you can't help but feel a thrill as Spider-Man and the Goblin battle it out just a few dozen feet above your head!”; “it’s a fantastic spectacle”; “Thrilling high-flying acrobatics”; “dazzling sequences unprecedented on Broadway!”; “It was one of the most dazzling theatrical experiences we have ever seen! And, most of that, we think, can be attributed to the bold and inspired work of Julie Taymor”; “[e]ssential elements of [the Original]

8. Ms. Taymor barely had time to eat dinner, that's how hard she was working!
From disclosed email correspondence between Ms. Taymor and Bono.

It is nine pm in NYC. I am just about to sit down to a home cooked meal. I have been at it on [Spider-Man] nonstop. Glen has as well. We are writing lyrics, lines of dialogue, changes in music–all in service to the ending, to clarity. We know what the story is, we understand the stakes–but we do not have the lyrics to support it. I would like to talk to you before midnight my time– after I eat– to go over the situation and beg for lyrics. We need you. It is not easy to change anything but now I think it is a matter of lyrical and musical changes — and perhaps cutting a scene or two from a second act.

9. Most incredibly: Julie Taymor spent seven years on Spider-Man and still couldn't get it to opening night.

In total denigration of Taymor’s over seven years of work on the Musical and with obvious malice, defendants assert in paragraph 10 of their counterclaims that “[t]he show is a success despite Taymor, not because of her.”

10. Spider-Man's ticket sales have not increased since the show opened and Ms. Taymor was fired.

The producers also have not created a more financially viable production than Taymor’s original production. The first version of Spider-Man consistently ranked as the second- or third-highest grossing show on Broadway, despite the lack of promotion of the show to encourage ticket sales during the prolonged preview period. Its box office receipts were almost identical to the box office receipts that the revised version has earned since Taymor was dismissed from the production.

So basically: Julie Taymor did everything, Glen Berger is a jerk, and even though the show is entirely different now--scrapping entire elements and characters of the original and creating new content--Ms. Taymor should also be getting credit for this. (Except for the parts of the show which were a flop, in which case it was the fault of Bono being drunk.)

Also Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark made a ton of money under Ms. Taymor's guidance, got rave reviews, everything was perfect, and nothing hurt. (Except for those internal injuries suffered by the show's actors.)

Julie Taymor and Bono, in better times. (Getty Images)

Though the production has been accident free since its official premiere at the Foxwood Theatre in June, there's still more blood to be spilled over Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. On November 8th, Julie Taymor, the ousted director of the play (along with her production company, LOH, Inc.) filed suit against the producers of the once-cursed production, saying that they had violated her creative rights and haven't compensated her for her work on the play.

The lead producers--who are listed in the Playbill item about the lawsuit--disagreed, and filed their own counter-suit in response to Ms. Taymor.

Ms. Taymor is requesting to be paid full royalties as a director and collaborator, according to the countersuit, "despite the fact that Taymor caused numerous delays, drove up costs, and failed to direct a musical about Spider-Man that could open on Broadway." The claim goes on to say:

“any similarities [between the final version and Taymor's original treatment]. . . exist by virtue of the fact that they are both based on the same pre-existing works in which Taymor cannot claim copyrights, including, but not limited to, the Spider-Man comic books and the 'Spider-Man' and 'Spider-Man' 2 films, which originated all of the main characters in the works at issue in this case, their settings, the Spider-Man origin story premise, and the plot elements that appear in the works.”

While this may or may not be true, it will be Ms. Taymor's name who is eligible for the Tony Awards this year, and not her successor, Philip Wm. McKinley, according to a recent ruling by the Tony Awards Administration Committee. Her name also appears in the credits for the show, under both "book by" and "original directing."

While Ms. Taymor might have an axe to grind against the show's producers, she's still on good enough terms with the cast to have turned up for their June premiere, where she was greeted by "wild applause" and embraced both Bono and the Edge.

"Spider-Man" makes it out of previews!

In honor of this momentous occasion, we put together a little timeline of the show's history. Enjoy! And try not to hurt yourself while reading this.

* $75 million+, and that's not even including the ongoing lawsuit with former director Julie Taymor and the worker's comp paid out to injured cast members.

But who knew he met Bono after the show? We did, of course! And how did we know? Twitter taught us, of course!

And what else did the Twitter machine explain to us this week? Well, click ahead and bask in the learning.

Click for What Twitter Taught Us: Glenn Beck Meets Bono and the World Collapses

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Thompson’s campaign has paid $30,000 since August to Harrell Entertainment, the company founded by hip-hop mogul Andre Harrell.

Harrell, in my book, is best known for giving a start to, and then firing, an up and coming producer named Sean Combs, aka P. Diddy. (It's not unlike Salomon Brothers firing a 31-year old in their tech division who ended up doing pretty well on his own.)

A Thompson campaign spokeswoman emailed to say “Andre is a consultant for the campaign focused on youth constituency outreach.”

And Harrell is not alone in that effort.

Yesterday, among the people representing public housing residents who were endorsing Thompson was 24-year-old Omar McCray of the Bronx. McCray said he was the president of the Bronx chapter of the Hip-Hop Party’s Bronx chapter, who were coming out next Monday to support Thompson.

“We know that Bill Thompson will do a great job,” McCray said. “Artists and executives and organizations that I represent will hold a press conference to make an official announcement in regards to the Hip-Hop Party.”

McCray declined to elaborate on the group after the event.

I knew this guy couldn't be the only one.

The U2 frontman will write between "six and ten" columns next year, and he's doing it ... pro bono.

Other Rosenthal dish from last night:

• He admires the work of The Atlantic's Megan McArdle and The National Review's Byron York
• "Condoleezza Rice is a particularly bad op-ed writer."
• Tom Wolfe writes too long