Aurelia Butler

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    Gérard Depardieu Punches the ‘King of Paparazzi’ Outside Rome Cafe

    Mr. Depardieu, 75, was seen striking the 79-year-old photographer Rino Barillari on the Via Veneto.The French film star Gérard Depardieu repeatedly punched Rino Barillari, known as the “king of paparazzi,” on Tuesday at Harry’s Bar on the Via Veneto, the grand hotel and cafe-lined avenue that was a lively haunt for celebrity-hunting paparazzi decades ago, according to the photographer and a journalist who witnessed the altercation.It could have been a scene straight out of “La Dolce Vita,” Federico Fellini’s early 1960s film that introduced the character of an annoying and eccentric photographer who hounded the movie stars that swelled the casts of Cinecittà film studios when Rome was known as “Hollywood on the Tiber.”Seeing Mr. Depardieu, 75, and Mr. Barillari, 79, on the Via Veneto was like “a time machine,” said Gianni Riotta, a columnist for the newspaper La Repubblica who said he saw the attack while he was having coffee at Harry’s Bar.Mr. Riotta said that Mr. Barillari had repeatedly been asked to stop taking photographs, and that when he turned to leave he was followed into the street by a shouting woman who had been sitting with Mr. Depardieu. The actor reached the photographer “and hit him, hit him, hit him,” Mr. Riotta recalled, speaking in Italian.“There was a lot of blood,” he said.Mr. Riotta said he gave a witness statement to the police when they arrived on the scene. It was unclear whether Mr. Barillari, who was taken by ambulance to a downtown hospital, would press charges.Lawyers for Mr. Depardieu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Delphine Meillet, a lawyer for the woman who had been sitting with Mr. Depardieu, Magda Vavrusova, said in a statement that Mr. Barillari had “violently pushed” her, touching her chest with his arm. She said that when Mr. Depardieu intervened, he had “fallen and slid onto” the photographer. Ms. Vavrusova was taken to a hospital and planned to sue Mr. Barillari, the lawyer said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Elvis Presley’s Granddaughter, Riley Keough, Sues to Block Graceland Sale

    His granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, claims that a company is fraudulently planning to auction off Elvis’s home in Memphis.Lawyers for the actress Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, have sued to stop what they say is a fraudulent scheme to sell Graceland, the family’s cherished former home in Memphis.Court papers that Ms. Keough’s lawyers filed this month claim that a company planning to auction off Graceland is fraudulently claiming that her mother — Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who died in 2023 — had borrowed money and put Graceland up as collateral. The papers say that the company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, “appears to be a false entity” and that the documents it presented about the loan were also fake.“There is no foreclosure sale,” Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates Graceland, said in a statement, in which it also said that the lawsuit had been filed to “stop the fraud.”Graceland, a popular tourist attraction, is a major source of income for Elvis Presley Enterprises and the family trust.A representative for Ms. Keough, who controls her family’s trust, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. A lawyer representing Ms. Keough in the case also did not respond.Months after Lisa Marie Presley died, Naussany Investments presented documents claiming that she had borrowed $3.8 million from the company and “gave a deed of trust encumbering Graceland as security,” according to court papers filed in Shelby County, Tenn. Copies of the documents were provided to The New York Times by Elvis Presley Enterprises.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Pixar Lays Off 14% of Its Staff and Will Stop Making Shows for Disney+

    The animation studio, which has struggled over the past few years, will stop making original shows for Disney+.Pixar will stop making original shows for Disney+ as part of a broader retrenchment, resulting in layoffs that will reduce its work force by 14 percent.Jim Morris, the president of Pixar, announced the layoffs in an internal memo on Tuesday that was viewed by The New York Times. He cited “the return to our focus on feature films.” About 175 employees will be let go.Questions about Pixar’s health have swirled in Hollywood and among investors since June 2022, when the Disney-owned studio released “Lightyear” to disastrous results. How could Pixar, the gold standard of animation studios for nearly three decades, have gotten a movie so wrong — especially one about Buzz Lightyear, a bedrock “Toy Story” character?Pixar’s next film, “Elemental,” an opposites-attract love story, arrived to alarmingly low ticket sales in June 2023, but ultimately generated a solid $500 million at the box office.One problem: Disney had weakened the Pixar brand by using its films to build the Disney+ streaming service. Starting in late 2020, when many multiplexes were still closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, Disney debuted three Pixar films in a row (“Soul,” “Turning Red” and “Luca”) online, bypassing theaters altogether.The layoffs on Tuesday, which were reported earlier by The Hollywood Reporter, acknowledged another reality: Pixar, like other Disney-owned studios, including Marvel, lost its focus when it was pushed to create original programming for Disney+. At the time — around December 2020 — Disney was pouring money into the streaming service in a wild and ultimately unsuccessful effort to attract up to 260 million subscribers worldwide. It had 87 million at the time. It has about 154 million today.Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of Disney, has since reversed course, emphasizing cost containment and quality — less can be more, if the standards are high. He has said repeatedly over the past year that the creative teams at Disney were stretched too thin by the streaming strategy.As part of the retrenchment at Pixar, “Elio,” a movie about an 11-year-old boy who is inadvertently beamed into space, was delayed. It was supposed to arrive this March. Disney pushed it to June 2025. (Pixar’s next film in theaters will be “Inside Out 2.” It is scheduled for release on June 14.)Pixar’s original series for Disney+ included “Cars on the Road,” focused on the “Cars” characters Lightning McQueen and Mater, and “Dug Days,” a series of shorts about the dog from the movie “Up.” The studio’s last original Disney+ series, “Win or Lose,” about a coed middle school softball team, will arrive late this year.Pixar will continue to make the occasional short film for Disney+. More

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    Trump Calls ‘Apprentice’ Biopic at Cannes ‘Garbage’ and Plans to Sue

    The director of “The Apprentice” was unfazed by the threat to the film, which covers the ex-president’s relationships with his first wife and the fixer Roy Cohn.The day after the Cannes Film Festival premiered “The Apprentice,” a biopic of Donald J. Trump, the former president hit back at the movie, calling it “malicious defamation” and threatening legal action.“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign.Directed by Ali Abbasi and written by the author Gabriel Sherman, “The Apprentice” follows Trump (Sebastian Stan) as an ambitious young man seeking to establish himself as a real estate magnate. He finds a mentor in the wily lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and a first wife in the fashion model Ivana Zelnickova (Maria Bakalova), though Trump is willing to discard both once they’re no longer of use to him.The film is hardly a flattering portrait of the former president, and includes scenes where the business mogul goes under the knife for liposuction and a scalp procedure to fix his bald spot. In its most controversial sequence, the Trump character sexually assaults his wife after she criticizes his looks. (Ivana, who died in 2022, accused Trump of rape in her divorce deposition, though she disavowed the claim later.)Cheung said the Trump team plans to file a lawsuit “to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.”Though the threat could affect the release of “The Apprentice,” which currently has no distributor, Abbasi sounded unfazed at the film’s news conference on Tuesday.“Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people,” the director said. “They don’t talk about his success rate, though.” More

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    At Cannes, the Dogs Were Good Again This Year

    The festival has long embraced canine stars like Messi, the hero of “Anatomy of a Fall,” while human stars are happy to take their furry friends along.On the morning the Cannes Film Festival opened, Messi, the canine hero of last year’s Palme d’Or-winning “Anatomy of a Fall,” was practicing climbing the stairs of the Grand Lumière Theater. The majestic entry is typically reserved for stars dressed in their finery, but the official red carpet had not yet been rolled out. Messi’s owner and trainer, Laura Martin Contini, coached him to bound up to the first landing and pose. He wasn’t quite hitting his mark, stopping just one step below, but he eventually got the hang of it. Contini rewarded him with coos of “Oui, jolie” and “Oui, bravo” and a squeaky soccer ball toy he seemed to particularly enjoy, his blue eyes growing even more intense at the sight of it.Messi was rehearsing for the opening credits of his new talk show, “Messi: The Cannes Film Festival From a Dog’s Eye View.” In the series of shorts for French TV, the star was going to interview talent (using the voice of a human actor).His presence was proof of an incontrovertible fact about the festival, now in its second week: Cannes loves dogs. You could see that as Demi Moore, star of this year’s “The Substance,” brought her Chihuahua, Pilaf, to the photo call. And you could see it as Messi went through his paces, occasionally carrying a camera in his mouth, and onlookers just outside the barricades took photos. “It’s like if I had George Clooney with me, but it’s just a dog,” said Tim Newman, a producer who came up with the idea for Messi’s program.Demi Moore brought Pilaf along during a photo call Monday for her new film, “The Substance.”Sebastien Nogier/EPA, via ShutterstockThe talk show is something of a victory lap for the pooch, who emerged as one of the biggest stars of the 2023 festival, even receiving the Palm Dog Award, given annually to the premier canine performer, though he couldn’t make that ceremony. “Last year we were not able to climb the famed steps of the Cannes arena, so this time we are returning and we are able to be at the red carpet and to support all of the dogs that will be considered for the Palm Dog,” Contini said, speaking through a translator.So why is this particular festival so friendly to pups? “Cannes is a good place for dogs to get a showcase because the French have a very sensible approach to dogs,” the Palm Dog founder Toby Rose said, explaining, “They are always pretty much without exception welcome to join in restaurants, which I know to the Anglo-Saxon American and Brits is almost heresy.” (Indeed, on the first day of my stay in Cannes this year a regal greyhound tottered in and out of a creperie while I ate.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    He Made the Met Opera’s Chorus the Best in the World

    During the second intermission of the Metropolitan Opera’s gilded, gargantuan production of “Turandot” one Friday last month, Donald Palumbo raced up to a tiny broadcast studio on the top floor for an interview.Then he raced downstairs again. There was something he needed to do backstage before the curtain rose.Palumbo, 75, who is retiring this spring after 17 years as the company’s chorus master, wanted to run through the start of Act III with the quartet of heralds, drawn from the chorus, who hauntingly call out a warning from Princess Turandot.It was 13 performances into the season’s “Turandot” run, at 10 o’clock at night. But Palumbo, one of opera’s most mild-mannered yet most unrelenting perfectionists, was still making sure that the singers’ intonation was flawless, still fine-tuning the placement of the first note in a certain phrase.Palumbo conducting from the wings during a performance of “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera in April. Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York Times“You have to be very specific,” he had said earlier about the way he coaches his choristers, “but you can’t micromanage.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Sexual Assault Suit Against Neil Portnow, Ex-Grammys Chief, Is Dismissed

    The plaintiff, who had filed her suit anonymously, told a judge that she feared the consequences if efforts to reveal her name during the proceeding were successful.A federal judge has dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit against the former head of the Grammy Awards, after the plaintiff fell out with her lawyers and said in court papers that she feared for her safety and well-being if her real name were revealed during the case.The suit was dismissed on Friday “without prejudice” by Judge Analisa Torres of Federal District Court in Manhattan, meaning it could be refiled again in the future.The plaintiff filed her suit anonymously in New York State Supreme Court in November, saying that Neil Portnow, the former chief executive of the Recording Academy, had drugged and raped her in a New York hotel room in 2018. Mr. Portnow, who led the Grammy organization from 2002 to 2019, denied the accusation, and in court papers his lawyers have said his encounter with the woman was consensual.The case was removed to federal court in January, and in April, Mr. Portnow’s lawyers said they would file a motion to compel the woman — who is described in court papers only as a musician from outside the United States — to use her real name.In response, the woman filed an unusual direct appeal to the judge, asking to have her case dismissed, and saying that she feared “potential grave harm” if her name became known. Her lawyers then asked permission to withdraw as her counsel, saying that “the attorney-client relationship has deteriorated beyond repair.”In her letter to the judge, the woman said that her lead attorney, Jeffrey R. Anderson, had actually resigned days earlier and told her in a letter: “Now that the defendants brought your case into the federal court where your anonymity and your name can no longer be protected, you are faced and we are faced with the possibility of grave further harm.”Lawyers for Mr. Portnow wrote to the judge saying that any dismissal of the case should be “with prejudice,” which would prevent her from bringing it again.The woman, they wrote, had engaged in “vexatious and harassing behavior that has caused substantial harm” to Mr. Portnow. Their response included what they said were excerpts from text messages and emails; they said the woman had proposed marriage to Mr. Portnow and asked him to write a letter of recommendation for an immigration application.In rejecting Mr. Portnow’s request, Judge Torres said that Mr. Portnow would not suffer “plain legal prejudice” if another case were brought. The judge also noted the text messages and emails he cited, saying: “Portnow’s one-sided characterization of the events at issue precedes discovery, and Portnow has not offered evidence that the litigation itself was filed with an ‘ill motive.’”In a statement, Mr. Portnow said, “These latest developments confirm what I have said over the past five years since the inception of these outrageous and damaging allegations: The claims against me were false and without merit. I look forward to moving on with my life and continuing to work on meaningful projects.” More

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    Ivan F. Boesky, Rogue Trader in 1980s Wall Street Scandal, Dies at 87

    An inspiration for the Gordon Gekko character in the movie “Wall Street,” he made a fortune from insider trading before his downfall brought a crashing end to a decade of greed.Ivan F. Boesky, the brash financier who came to symbolize Wall Street greed as a central figure of the 1980s insider trading scandals, and who went to prison for his misdeeds, died on Monday at his home in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego. He was 87.His daughter Marianne Boesky said he died in his sleep.An inspiration for the character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s movie “Wall Street” and its sequel, Mr. Boesky made a fortune betting on stock tips, often passed to him illegally in exchange for suitcases of cash. His guilty plea to insider trading in November 1986 and his $100 million penalty, a record at the time, sent shock waves through Wall Street and set off a cascade of events that marked the end of a decade of frenzied takeover activity and the celebration of conspicuous wealth.As federal investigators closed in on Mr. Boesky, he agreed to cooperate, providing information that led to the downfall of the investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert and its junk bond king, Michael Milken.Mr. Boesky brought an aggressive style to the once-sleepy world of arbitrage, the buying and selling of stocks in companies that appear to be takeover targets. Sniffing out impending deals, he amassed stock positions at levels never seen before.At the top of his game in the mid-1980s, he had a net worth of $280 million (about $818 million in today’s currency) and a trading portfolio valued at $3 billion (about $8.7 billion today), much of it financed with borrowed money. Home was a sprawling estate in Westchester County, N.Y., its main house adorned with a Renoir and carpets embossed with his monogram, “IFB.” (The estate was once owned by the Revson family, founders of Revlon cosmetics and, before that, the family behind Macy’s, the Strauses.)Besides a Manhattan pied-à-terre, there was a retreat on the French Riviera, a lavish Paris apartment and a condo in Hawaii. Through his first wife, Seema Boesky, he was part owner of the celebrated Beverly Hills Hotel, a lush pink concoction favored by Hollywood stars as well as by titans of finance attending the Predators’ Ball, Drexel Burnham’s annual get-together.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More