By Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — It was a busy weekend for Eliot Spitzer, with a movie premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and an incendiary interview in the New York Times. So much so, it left many Albany politicians wishing he would just go away.
The “Untitled Eliot Spitzer Film,” in which Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney examines the rise and fall of Spitzer through a series of interviews with family, friends and foes, premiered at Tribeca Saturday night.
The next morning, the Times hit the streets with a front-page interview with Spitzer in which he questioned whether Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who's widely assumed to be considering a run for governor, had the stomach to fight Albany's entrenched elites.
By Monday, that entrenched power was rushing to Cuomo's defense.
"I think Eliot Spitzer, for one reason or another, walked away, and he should refrain from being critical of other people who have his job and are looking to aspire to be governor," Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told the Daily News.
The only beneficiary of this is the Republican Party," Silver told the New York Post. "Eliot Spitzer has had his opportunity, and now it's time for someone else to have that opportunity. I don't see how this helps him."
If Spitzer did want to help himself, Silver continued in the News, the best way "is probably to be quiet for a while and not focus attention on himself."
That could prove difficult with the movie out.
In the film, one of the madams at the “Emperors Club VIP”, said she thought Spitzer’s first call was a prank — until he asked for three women for the night, the Post reported.
"He was whispering, I thought it was a prank," said Emperor Club-madam Cecil Suwal in the film, according to the Post. "I guess it wasn't a prank."
During the film, it's revealed that a call girl named Angelina was the ex-governor's favorite woman from the Emperors Club, and she said he didn't wear black socks to bed, the News reported.
Spitzer also said in the documentary that his patronage of prostitutes never interfered with his job.
In the an interview with the Times, Spitzer spoke candidly about almost-certain gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
He said Cuomo was a real Albany insider, and was skeptical about Cuomo’s willingness to stand up to special interests should he run and be elected governor.
“I think the question will be, ‘Will he take on the interests who are deeply embedded in the structure of Albany?’ — confront both fiscal and economic development issues in a way that will put us on a fundamentally different trajectory?” Spitzer told the Times.
“The real test is, do you take on the battles that have been unpopular and perhaps seem impossible to win but are important to take on?”
Spitzer was also critical of the way Cuomo has dealt with the financial industry, insinuating that the attorney general has been too soft on Wall Street.
“There’s still a little bit of a gap between headlines and reality in the areas of pursuit,” Spitzer told the Times, saying he believed there should have been more intervention on Cuomo's part to be "a bit more disruptive to Wall Street.”
When asked whether he would vote for Cuomo, Spitzer demurred, saying, "I do want to see who else will be in the race."
Spitzer, whose career in politics ended — at least temporarily — in 2008 when his involvement in a prostitution ring came to light, has slowly been making his way back into the mainstream, first with a regular column in Slate and then with television appearances on everything from "The Colbert Report" in February to a co-hosting gig on MSNBC in early April.
An April Marist Poll revealed that New York City is still not ready to welcome Spitzer back to politics, with 66 percent of city voters saying they would not want the ex-governor to run for mayor in 2013.
