Aurelia Butler

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    2024 Golden Globe Awards: Stars Hit the Red Carpet of the Revamped Globes

    As Hollywood heads into the heart of its awards season — a three-month orgy of frothy self-celebration and pop culture glamour — celebrities and their handlers find themselves with a serious decision to make: what, if anything, to say about the Israel-Hamas war.Movie stars have become increasingly willing, even determined, to use award shows like the Golden Globes, scheduled for Sunday on CBS, to bring attention to progressive causes and concerns. In recent years, winners like Meryl Streep, Russell Crowe and Michelle Williams have incorporated topics like sexual harassment, the global refugee crisis, abortion rights, Trumpism, climate change, Black Lives Matter, veganism and the Ukraine war into acceptance speeches.Viewers from both political sides sometimes bristle at what they see as elitist lecturing. But in the Los Angeles ballrooms where these trophies are awarded and such speeches are made, the response is usually uniform praise. The couture-clad A-listers leap to their feet to offer ovations.The Israel-Hamas war is much more complicated.“It’s such a treacherous topic — there’s no response, especially in the sound-bite scrum of a red carpet, or in a breakneck acceptance speech, that won’t offend someone,” said Martin Kaplan, who runs the Norman Lear Center for entertainment, media and society at the University of Southern California. “Add alcohol to the mix, as is often the case at these awards dinners, and what could possibly go wrong?”Susan Sarandon, center, at a protest in New York City in November. United Talent Agency dropped her after she made public statements about the war in Gaza.Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesReaction to the conflict has convulsed Hollywood, where there is a large Jewish presence, along with many other parts of America. On one side, there is ardent support for Israel. On the other are those who view the Palestinian cause as an extension of the racial and social justice movements that swept the United States in the summer of 2020.Stars have been fired from movies. Agencies have dropped clients; clients have dropped agents. Friendships have been severed, with people accusing one another of hypocrisy and betrayal.Ahead of the Golden Globes, which kick-starts the awards season in earnest, some publicists and agents have been advising celebrity clients to say nothing about the Israel-Hamas war. One carelessly chosen word could torpedo their hopes for an Oscar, and maybe even their career. One longtime Hollywood publicist who has clients in this year’s Oscar race summed up her advice on the topic as “run for the hills.” A couple of A-list clients, she added, would walk red carpets but skip interviews. Too risky.Others worry that silence itself is a political message. After Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel, most Hollywood unions rushed to condemn the violence. But one leading union, the Writers Guild of America, refused to put out a statement and stuck with its decision in the face of enormous backlash from hundreds of its members.Jeffrey Wright, an awards contender for his role in “American Fiction,” has weighed in on the conflict on social media.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressSome leading Hollywood communications firms, including Rogers & Cowan PMK and ID PR, have offered yellow ribbons to wear in support of the hostages in Gaza. They see the effort, managed in part by Ashlee Margolis, who runs an entertainment and fashion marketing firm called the A-List, as nonpolitical, though some might disagree.“Wearing a symbolic yellow ribbon to support the 136 women, children and men — both Israeli and American — who were brutally kidnapped by terrorists and remain in captivity is not only powerfully human, and certainly noncontroversial, but camera ready,” Melissa Zukerman, a managing partner of Principal Communications Group, said in an email.The parade of ceremonies after the Golden Globes will include the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards and the British Academy Film Awards, before culminating on March 10 with the Academy Awards. This year, the strike-delayed Emmy Awards and Governors Awards have also been squeezed into the corridor.Most of these galas come with red carpets lined by reporters. Stars should expect to be asked about the Israel-Hamas war, said Marc Malkin, a senior Variety editor and co-host of the official Golden Globes preshow on Sunday. “If they have posted about it on Instagram or signed an open letter it’s fair game,” he said.In response to the Hamas attack, Natalie Portman posted a statement on Instagram that read, in part, “My heart is shattered for the people of Israel.”Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat would seem to include the Israeli-born actress Natalie Portman, a nominee for “May December,” who has posted on social media expressing horror about the Hamas attack, and Jeffrey Wright, a nominee for his acting in “American Fiction,” who has questioned the wisdom of Israel’s retaliation. Bradley Cooper, a multiple nominee for “Maestro,” signed two public letters, one about the hostages that urged “the fight for their freedom to continue” and the other calling for “an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire.”Spokeswomen for those nominees either declined to comment or did not respond to inquiries.The coming self-congratulation-athon could certainly go off without a hitch, with celebrities speaking knowledgeably about the complex and divisive topic. But the odds are not in Hollywood’s favor. The movie business has a long if not proud history of tone-deaf behavior.There was the time in 2008 when Sharon Stone, walking a red carpet, started a media frenzy by saying an earthquake in China, which left 88,000 dead or missing, was perhaps karmic payback for the country’s handling of Tibet. In 2022, jaws dropped in living rooms across America when, moments after Will Smith attacked Chris Rock on the Oscar stage, guests inside the theater gave Mr. Smith a standing ovation after his teary best-actor acceptance speech.Award shows used to have a fiery speech here, a political shout-out there — whether it was Marlon Brando’s sending out an activist for Native Americans to decline his 1973 Oscar for best actor or Vanessa Redgrave’s denouncing “Zionist hoodlums” in 1978. For the most part, however, stars worked at being stars, turning on the charm and saying nothing that might alienate a single ticket buyer.Sacheen Littlefeather refused the Academy Award on behalf of Marlon Brando in 1973. Bettman Archive, via Getty ImagesThat has changed, and the Golden Globes have led the way.In 2017, Ms. Streep tore into President-elect Donald J. Trump from the Globes stage. The next year, the Globes became a de facto rally for the Time’s Up movement, with actresses wearing black to protest sexual harassment and Oprah Winfrey delivering a scorching speech. In 2020, Ms. Williams gave an impassioned plea for abortion rights, while Mr. Crowe called attention to climate change and a bush fire crisis in Australia.Last year, the Globes gave airtime to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who gave a speech about his country’s war with Russia.Representatives for the Globes did not respond to queries about whether this year’s show would teeter into politics.Producers who specialize in awards telecasts say research, compiled mainly from Nielsen, indicates that most viewers dislike it when celebrities turn a trip to the stage into a political bully pulpit. One recent producer of the Oscars said minute-by-minute ratings analysis indicated that “vast swaths” of people turned off televisions when celebrities started to opine on politics. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential metrics.The comedian Ricky Gervais, hosting the Globes in 2020, used part of his monologue to tell Hollywood that it was testing the public’s tolerance for mixing serious causes with awards bacchanalia.“You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything — you know nothing about the real world,” Mr. Gervais said, adding: “If you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your god” and get off the stage. More

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    Will Taylor Swift Be At the Golden Globes?

    The Globes found a new way to nominate Taylor Swift. The singer picked up her fifth Golden Globe nomination, for her concert film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” thanks to the new blockbuster film category. But there’s no word yet on her plans for the evening.She attended the first three years she was nominated — all in the song category, which she has never won — but skipped last year’s ceremony, when she was up for another song nod (for “Carolina” from the film “Where the Crawdads Sing”), after beginning Eras Tour rehearsals a few days before.She does have a potential conflict: Her beau, Travis Kelce, a N.F.L. tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, had a game against the Los Angeles Chargers at SoFi Stadium, in nearby Inglewood, Calif., that began a few hours before the ceremony. But, given the low stakes — Kansas City has already locked in its playoff position — a Globes appearance may be in the cards. Perhaps Kelce even pops by a few after-parties with her? More

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    Golden Globes Winners 2024: Updating List

    The winning films, TV shows, actors and production teams at the 2024 Golden Globe Awards.Follow our live updates for the 2024 Golden Globes.Tuning into the Golden Globes this year might mean more than catching a glimpse of the stars or getting an idea of what the Oscars might have in store.After the ethics, finance and diversity scandal within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association led to the cancellation of the 2022 broadcast, the Golden Globes were sold in 2023 and the Hollywood Foreign Press dissolved. So the question looming seems to be: What impact will the show have this year under new ownership?In the movie categories, “Barbie” leads nominations with nine, “Oppenheimer” close behind with eight. For television, “Succession” has nine nominations and “The Bear” and “Only Murders in the Building” each have five.Even Time’s 2023 person of the year, Taylor Swift, found herself with a nomination this year for her Eras Tour concert film, in a new category that recognizes movies that have grossed at least $100 million at the United States box office and $150 million worldwide. The other new category is for stand-up comedy specials on TV.The ceremony will air Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern time (5 p.m. Pacific time) on CBS and its streaming partner, Paramount+. Follow below for updates as winners are announced. More

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    Klee Benally, Navajo Activist and Artist, Dies at 48

    He helped found a punk-rock band when he was 14. That led to a long career as an advocate for Native American and environmental causes.Klee Benally, a dynamic Navajo activist, artist and punk-rock musician who championed Native American and environmental causes, died on Dec. 30 in Phoenix. He was 48.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his sister, Jeneda Benally. She did not specify the cause.For decades, Mr. Benally, who lived in Flagstaff, Ariz., fought the expansion of the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort on one of the San Francisco Peaks, a mountain range just north of Flagstaff that 13 tribes consider sacred. He also fought the resort’s use of treated wastewater to make snow, a practice that Native Americans and environmental groups said was poisoning the ecosystem. He protested against a pumice mine on those same peaks, and against uranium mining and transport in the area.He campaigned for the rights and care of Indigenous homeless people and against racial profiling. He made films and art about his activism.He was a community organizer and a youth counselor; he taught media literacy and film to Indigenous teenagers; and he marched against the celebration of Thanksgiving. Late last year he published a book, “No Spiritual Surrender,” about his efforts practicing what he called Indigenous anarchy, and he created a board game, “Burn the Fort,” in which Native American warriors fight off colonizers (and learn some history while doing so).He chained himself to an excavator, was charged with trespassing and joined numerous legal complaints.But his first foray into activism was through music, in 1989. He was 14 when he and his siblings, Jeneda and Clayson, formed Blackfire, a high-velocity punk band that mixed traditional Navajo chants and music with protest songs about the oppression of Indigenous people.Mr. Benally embraced the middle-finger-to-the-world punk ethos — he loved the Ramones, whose music he introduced to his mother, a folk singer — and he could really shred a guitar. The Ramones loved Blackfire back: C.J. Ramone produced the band’s first EP, “Spirit in Action” (1994), and Joey Ramone sang on two of the songs on “One Nation Under” (2002), its first full-length album.Critics were admiring, too. In 2007, David Fricke of Rolling Stone touted Blackfire’s fourth album, “[Silence] Is a Weapon,” as “pure ire, CBGB-hardcore-matinee protest with jolts of ancient chorale.”The band played at South by Southwest and other music festivals but declined to play in bars, at least at first. Mr. Benally thought it would be hypocritical, given that alcohol abuse was an issue on reservations. In addition, at the time the Benally siblings were all under 21.“Some people watch too many movies and think John Wayne killed all the Indians or they’re out dancing with wolves,” he told The Albuquerque Journal in 2003, explaining Blackfire’s mission to educate audiences. “But in reality there are over 500 nations throughout the U.S. carrying on their cultures, their own individual ways of life, their own languages and their own ceremonies.”Mr. Benally in 2005. He spent decades protesting the expansion of a ski resort on a mountain range that 13 tribes consider sacred.Jill Torrance/Arizona Daily Sun, via Associated PressKlee Jones Benally was born on Oct. 6, 1975, in Black Mesa, Ariz., on the Navajo reservation near Flagstaff. Music and activism ran in the family. Klee’s father, Jones Benally, is a traditional Diné (as the Navajo call themselves) medicine man; his mother, Berta Benally, is an activist and folk musician of Russian-Polish Jewish heritage who grew up in the folk scene of Greenwich Village. The couple met in Los Angeles, where she was working with Hopi elders.Klee and his siblings were brought up with their father’s Diné traditions, and they grew up performing traditional dances. Their mother introduced them to the folk canon; Blackfire would later set some of Woody Guthrie’s poems to music. The area where they lived was part of a land dispute that forced the relocation of thousands of Navajo people, and attending protests became a family affair.In addition to his sister and his parents, Mr. Benally is survived by his wife, Princess Benally, and his brother.Blackfire went on hiatus after two decades, mostly so the Benally siblings could concentrate more directly on advocacy and activism.Mr. Benally often framed his environmental work in terms of religious freedom. “As Indigenous people in the so-called United States, we don’t have guarantees for our religious freedoms like the rest of you,” he told The Arizona Republic in 2013. “This is a struggle for cultural survival — the struggle to protect sacred spaces.”Mr. Benally was a local hero in Flagstaff, where he founded a number of community organizations and aid groups. He was both angry and pragmatic; he liked to say that everyone was indigenous to somewhere.“He was a powerhouse of anticolonial thought and action — ever ready to protect the land,” Dallas Goldtooth, a Native American activist and actor, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.Mr. Benally explained his worldview in a 2020 interview with Spirituality Health magazine: “As an artist, there’s no dichotomy between art and life with our traditional teachings as Diné people. There’s no separation; our life is creation. So our creative expression comes in many different ways. What I look at is: What are the issues facing our communities, and what strategies can be most effective? Is it going to be through song? Is it going to be through prayer or action? Or can it be all of them?” More

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    Norby Walters, 91, Dies; Music and Sports Agent Who Ran Afoul of the Law

    He ran a highly successful booking agency, but his secret contacts with college athletes led to convictions (later reversed) for racketeering and fraud.Norby Walters, a booking agent for some of the country’s top disco, R&B, funk and hip-hop artists whose aggressive leap in the 1980s into signing college athletes to secret contracts before they turned pro led to legal problems, died on Dec. 10 in Burbank, Calif. He was 91.His son Gary confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility.Mr. Walters found his footing in show business through his ownership of restaurants, pizzerias, mambo joints and nightclubs, including the Norby Walters Supper Club on the East Side of Manhattan, near the Copacabana, which he opened in 1966.He walked away from the club business two years later after a customer at the supper club, shot two mobsters dead in front of about 50 people.“Everybody hit the floor,” Mr. Walters told The New York Times in 2016. “And this guy was very calm about it. He sat down at the bar, put the pistol down and waited to be taken.”Mr. Walters closed the club soon after.He switched to booking musical acts into nightclubs, lounges and hotels, which proved lucrative. Over the next two decades, the client list of Norby Walters Associates (later called General Talent International) included Gloria Gaynor, Dionne Warwick, Patti LaBelle, Parliament-Funkadelic, the Commodores, Luther Vandross, the Four Tops, Run-DMC, Kool & the Gang, Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy.In the early 1980s, Mr. Walters glimpsed a new opportunity in the top tier of college football players. With a partner, Lloyd Bloom, he established World Sports & Entertainment. From 1984 to 1987, the two men signed dozens of athletes to secret contracts that included inducements like cash, loans and cars in exchange for giving their agency exclusive rights to handle their future negotiations with N.F.L. teams, according to the 1988 federal indictment against them.Most of the inducements violated National Collegiate Athletic Association regulations and would have rendered the athletes ineligible to compete had their schools known about them. But Mr. Walters and Mr. Bloom said their lawyers had assured them that the contracts were legal even if the players were still with their college teams.The indictment charged Mr. Walters and Mr. Bloom with conspiring with the athletes to conceal the payments by having them agree to postdated contracts that appeared to have been signed after their last collegiate games.“The crime alleged that he conspired with students to steal their educations, which was preposterous, since the schools had little concern about whether they got an education,” Gary Walters said in a phone interview. He added, “Norby wasn’t doing anything different in the sports business than he did in the music business: giving fair compensation to players who had been denied it.”The government also charged that the contracts were backed by threats of violence, some involving the mobster Michael Franzese, a member of the Colombo crime family. When most of the athletes decided they did not want Mr. Walters and Mr. Bloom to represent them but kept the cars and the money anyway, the indictment accused them of threatened to have their legs broken and threatened their families with physical harm.Gary Walters said his father denied having threatened anyone and also denied that Mr. Franzese had any involvement in his sports business.Mr. Walters and Mr. Bloom were convicted of mail fraud and racketeering in 1989. Mr. Walters was sentenced to five years in prison and Mr. Bloom to three, but neither served a day.An appeals court reversed the racketeering convictions in 1990, ruling that the trial judge had not instructed the jury that the two men’s actions had been guided by their lawyers’ advice that the signings were legal.In 1993, the mail fraud convictions were also overturned.“Walters is by all accounts a nasty and untrustworthy fellow,” Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote in the 1993 ruling, “but the prosecutor did not prove that his efforts to circumvent the N.C.A.A.’s rules amounted to mail fraud.”Mr. Bloom was shot to death at his home in Malibu, Calif., later that year.By then, Mr. Walters had retired from his music and sports businesses, which had been damaged by the federal investigation, and remade himself as the host of celebrity parties and poker games.Norbert Meyer was born on April 20, 1932, in Brooklyn. His father, Yosele Chezchonovitch, a Polish immigrant, served in the Army (where he changed his name to Joseph Meyer) during World War I and later became a diamond courier and the owner of a nightclub in Brooklyn and a sideshow attraction at Coney Island. His mother, Florence (Golub) Meyer, was a homemaker.“I traveled all over the country with my father’s freak shows,” Mr. Walters told The Daily News of New York in 1987. “It was all a scam. There were no freaks, the alligator boy was a poor fellow with a horrible skin condition, the girl with no body was done with mirrors, the turtle girl was a dwarf with a costume.”Norby studied business at Brooklyn College from 1950 to 1951 and served in the Army until 1953. He and his brother, Walter, took over their father’s club that year and renamed it Norby & Walter’s Bel Air.On opening night, when Norby greeted customers by saying, “Hello, I’m Norby,” some responded by asking, “Oh are you Norby Walters?” When the brothers stepped outside, they saw that the neon sign outside the club did not have the necessary ampersand. It said, “Norby Walters Bel Air Club.”“I’ve been Norby Walters ever since,” he told The Atlanta Constitution in 1987. “My brother hated me for it.” His brother, who became known as Walter B. Walters, died in 2004.Norby Walters carried the name — which he eventually changed legally — through his restaurant, club, music and sports careers, and into his final chapter.From 1990 to 2017, he organized an annual Oscar viewing party, which he called Night of 100 Stars, in hotel ballrooms in Beverly Hills. It drew stars like Jon Voight, Shirley Jones, Charles Bronson, Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau. He was also the host of a regular poker party at his condos in Southern California, where the regulars included Milton Berle, Bryan Cranston, Richard Lewis, Jason Alexander, James Woods, Charles Durning, Mimi Rogers and Alex Trebek.The final chapter of Mr. Walters’s life included a regular celebrity poker party. At one such party, the attendees included (standing, from left) his wife, Irene; his son Gary; the actors Dan Lauria, Lou Diamond Phillips and Bruce Davison; and Mr. Walters himself, as well as (seated) the actors Ed Asner, Mimi Rogers, Jason Alexander, James Woods and Kristanna Loken.via Walters Family“It was $2 a hand,” Robert Wuhl, the actor and comedian, said by phone. “So the most anybody lost was $250 and the most anybody won was $300 to $400. It was all about the kibitzing. Buddy Hackett would come to kibitz.”The Oscar party was not as hot a ticket as those hosted by Vanity Fair magazine or Elton John, but it was more accessible. In 2016, for $1,000 a seat or $25,000 for a V.I.P. table package, a civilian without show business credentials could be admitted and hang out with celebrities.In addition to his son Gary, Mr. Walters is survived by two other sons, Steven and Richard. His wife, Irene (Solowitz) Walters, died in 2022.Nearly 30 years after his legal problems caused him to retire, Mr. Walters said he understood his place in the Hollywood pantheon.“As I always say to my wife,” he told The Times in 2016, a few days before his penultimate Oscar party, “‘I used to be important.’” More

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    ‘Color Purple’ Struggles at Box Office After Big Christmas Opening

    The musical adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel seemed an instant hit, but it sold less than $5 million in tickets in its second weekend.“The Color Purple,” a new musical take on Alice Walker’s landmark novel, seemed to arrive as an instant hit.Awash in critical exultation, the movie rolled into theaters on Christmas Day and sold more than $18 million in tickets, a near record for the holiday. Audiences gave it an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls. Oprah Winfrey, who produced the film with Steven Spielberg, celebrated on Instagram. “I’m overwhelmed with gratitude,” she wrote, adding, “For y’all to buy tickets, dress up in purple, and show up in droves is filling me up.”But the sizzle has turned to a sputter.“The Color Purple,” which cost Warner Bros. at least $90 million to make and another $40 million to market, collected an estimated $4.8 million from 3,218 theaters in the United States and Canada over the weekend, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. It was enough only for seventh place, behind George Clooney’s “The Boys in the Boat” — a period drama that also arrived on Christmas Day — even though “The Boys in the Boat” had only 2,687 theaters.What happened?In Hollywood parlance, the movie has not broadened beyond a “specialty audience.” To put it more candidly, “The Color Purple,” enthusiastically received by Black moviegoers, needs more white, Hispanic and Asian ticket buyers to give it a chance. The film’s opening-weekend audience was 65 percent Black, 19 percent white, 8 percent Hispanic and about 5 percent Asian, according to PostTrak, a service that provides studios with demographic information on ticket buyers.Fantasia Barrino was nominated for a Golden Globe and could receive more recognition for her performance.Warner Bros. PicturesWarner Bros. has not given up.“I think the jury is going to be out for several weeks, as people talk to their friends about what movies they have seen and enjoyed — what has moved them and uplifted them — and the film continues to be honored by awards groups,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner’s president of domestic distribution.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?  More

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    Paul Giamatti on ‘The Holdovers’

    Paul Giamatti would just like to put it out there that maybe he doesn’t always have to play such a motormouth.It might be nice, just to shake things up a bit, if he could portray someone more likely to express themselves nonverbally — a taciturn horse breeder with an anguished past, say, or a world-class safecracker with shrapnel-related vocal cord injuries.“Please, don’t make me talk so much,” he said recently, in a low register, his hangdog eyes pleading with the universe.Giamatti watchers may have a hard time imagining the actor tongue-tied. He is one of cinema’s great talkers, often cited for dazzling flights of oratory. Think of Miles’s profane rebuke of merlot in “Sideways” (2004), or the founding father flogging the virtues of independence in “John Adams” (2008) or the brash boxing manager Joe Gould in “Cinderella Man” (2005). For Giamatti to yearn for fewer lines of dialogue might sound like a Formula 1 car pining for a bus route.His latest role, as Paul Hunham in “The Holdovers” — a solitary and cantankerous New England boarding-school teacher saddled with babysitting duty over Christmas break — adds a number of memorable monologues to the actor’s oeuvre. But Giamatti also imbues the character with a deep well of melancholy and thinly disguised tenderness, traits that tend to reveal themselves in wordless, physical gestures: a crumpling of the chin, a narrowing of one eye.“There are close-ups where you can see not only his transition from one thought to the next, but all of the little micro-thoughts that happen in between,” said Alexander Payne, the director of “The Holdovers,” who reteamed with Giamatti nearly 20 years after “Sideways.” “You could hire him to play the Hunchback of Notre Dame and he’d do a great job with it.”The real Giamatti, as encountered last month during an interview in Beverly Hills, is soft-spoken, gentle-mannered and contemplative, with a habit of gazing off into the distance when he needs to collect a thought. If you didn’t keep up with “Billions,” Giamatti’s workhorse Showtime drama that ended in the fall after seven seasons, his hair is whiter than you might remember, as if Santa Claus had a brother with a humanities degree.Giamatti is often mistakenly presumed to be similar to his characters, which is both a compliment and a nuisance. Payne is convinced that the actor didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for “Sideways” (his co-stars Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen were nominated in the supporting categories) because he made it look too easy. In real life, let it be known, Giamatti is not terribly interested in wine and knows little about it, much to the dismay of fans who approach him in restaurants.Aside from a shared interest in the arcana of the Roman Empire, he has few things in common with his character in “The Holdovers” — an antiquities teacher and campus ogre with an impaired eye and a skin condition that makes him smell like fish.Yet Giamatti found himself strangely invested in the role. Both of his parents were teachers (his father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was the president of Yale and later the commissioner of Major League Baseball), and he graduated from a prep school similar to the one depicted in the movie. More so than for any role he can recall, he got lost in the character, allowing his own memories and experiences to color his performance.After playing so many loquacious characters, Giamatti would love to take on a taciturn sort: “Please, don’t make me talk so much.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“It was more unconscious than normal, which was a little alarming because I almost felt at times like I wasn’t working hard enough, like I was being lazy,” Giamatti said. “Even when I watched it, it was weird. I kept looking on and thinking, Is that what I was doing?”Giamatti was born and raised in Connecticut and attended Yale for both his undergraduate degree and masters of fine arts, in English literature and drama. Although he quickly dispensed with the idea of following his parents into academia, he has always been a voracious reader with a deep interest in science fiction, history, philosophy and mysticism. On “Chinwag,” Giamatti’s podcast, started earlier this year with Stephen Asma, a philosophy professor and author, the actor peppers friends and experts with questions about obscure historical figures and the paranormal: ghosts, U.F.O.s, Hollow Earth theory, ancient Egypt.Asma befriended Giamatti during the pandemic (the actor emailed him, out of the blue, to compliment him on an online lecture he’d given about the science of imagination), and said they had spent two hours during their first conversation discussing the little-known 18th-century Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg.“Every wall of every room in his apartment has bookshelves filled with books, multiple levels deep,” Asma said. “He reads more than most English professors I know, but he wears it lightly.”In both his life and his work, Giamatti has always been drawn to characters on the margins. He is the rare baseball fan more interested in the umpires than the players. (“You’re a hugely important part of the game, and yet you’re outside of it — what is that like?”)“There are close-ups where you can see not only his transition from one thought to the next, but all of the little micro-thoughts that happen in between,” said Alexander Payne, director of “The Holdovers.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesEven in supporting roles — a coldblooded slave trader in “12 Years a Slave,” a duplicitous music manager in “Straight Outta Compton” — his presence turns up the volume of humanity onscreen.When he is preparing for a part, Giamatti reads and rereads the script numerous times (he is not generally a fan of improvisation), making inferences about how the character might present in three dimensions. He often looks for ways to transform himself physically, a task for which his regular-joe facade has proved handy.“You can dress me as a short-order cook, or as a butler, or as the president of the United States in the 18th century, and I kind of look like I should wear the clothes,” he said.For “The Holdovers,” in which his character gradually forms a bond with a bright but troubled student (the newcomer Dominic Sessa) and the head of the school’s cafeteria (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Giamatti grew a handlebar mustache and wore a toggle jacket inspired by a similar one of his father’s.But the person he most found himself channeling, the man he sees when he watches the film now, is a biology teacher from his own prep school, Choate Rosemary Hall: a sarcastic, “pasty, comb-over man” who seemed lonely and smelled like an ashtray and a martini.As a student, Giamatti didn’t think much about the man, and the two almost never exchanged words. But one day, late in the school year, after a test on which he had performed uncharacteristically poorly, the teacher stopped by Giamatti’s desk.“He handed me back the test and said, ‘You usually do really good on these, what happened?’” Giamatti recalled. “I was like 15 and just shrugged: ‘I don’t know, man.’ But the guy stayed there and he looked me in the eye and asked, ‘Is everything OK?’”Giamatti, feeling awkward, said that it was, and they never discussed it again. But the fact that the teacher — someone he had effectively considered a stranger, or worse — not only knew him well enough to suspect something was wrong, but cared enough to ask, has always stayed with him.“It took me by surprise,” Giamatti said. “He actually gave a [expletive] about us.” More

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    Channeling the Pain of Chinese Immigrants, in Music and Verse

    “Angel Island,” an oratorio by Huang Ruo, brings to life the stark poetry of Chinese detained on the California island in the first part of the 20th century.In “Angel Island,” a staged oratorio about the anguish and isolation of Chinese detainees at Angel Island Immigration Station in California, a choir recites a poem about tyranny and misfortune.“Like a stray dog forced into confinement, like a pig trapped in a bamboo cage, our spirits are lost in this wintry prison,” they sing in Chinese. “We are worse than horses and cattle. Our tears shed on an icy day.”The poem is one of more than 200 inscribed on barrack walls at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, where hundreds of thousands of people, mostly from China and Japan, were questioned and held — sometimes for months or even years — as they sought entry to the United States in the first part of the 20th century. Their harrowing accounts form the emotional core of “Angel Island,” by the Chinese-born composer Huang Ruo, which has its New York premiere this month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in a staging that is part of the opera and theater festival Prototype.The production, directed by Matthew Ozawa and featuring the Del Sol Quartet and members of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, shines light on life at Angel Island, the port of entry for many Asian immigrants from 1910 to 1940, whose punishing atmosphere stood in contrast to the more welcoming spirit of Ellis Island.Angel Island, in San Francisco Bay, in 1949.San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers, via Getty ImagesOfficials examine Japanese immigrants on a ship at Angel Island in 1931.Corbis HistoricalThe oratorio also tackles the legacy of injustice and discrimination against people of Asian descent in America, weaving in historical events, including the 1871 massacre of Chinese residents in Los Angeles and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned the immigration of laborers from China.Huang described “Angel Island” as activist art, saying he wanted to “give people history that they didn’t learn in school.”“This is not just a Chinese American story,” he said. “This is an American story.”The oratorio, which premiered on Angel Island in 2021, comes to the stage at a time of heightened concern about the treatment of Asians and Asian Americans in the United States, following the wave of violence against people of Asian descent during the early years of the coronavirus pandemic.“Angel Island” hints at parallels between past and present — highlighting, for example, racist portrayals of Asians as carriers of disease in the late 1800s, a precursor to the pandemic’s xenophobia and the use of the “Chinese virus” label to describe Covid-19.In Ozawa’s staging, the dancer Jie-Hung Connie Shiau plays a modern-day woman who uncovers artifacts explaining her great-grandmother’s immigration to the United States. Through film and movement, she immerses herself in the world of her ancestors.The composer Huang Ruo at a recent rehearsal of “Angel Island.” “This is not just a Chinese American story,” he said. “This is an American story.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOzawa, who is Japanese American, said that taking part in “Angel Island,” which features a largely Asian American cast and creative team, was difficult because of the rawness of the history. But the work could also be uplifting.“It’s painful to be reminded of racism and prejudice and exclusion, but simultaneously it is very cathartic to be open with it and to allow ourselves to feel what our ancestors have felt and know that we’re not alone,” he said. “We are actually part of a much larger story that is filled with hope, redemption and the power to change things.”Huang and the Del Sol Quartet, which is based in San Francisco, began working on “Angel Island” in 2017, when they received a $150,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation to create an oratorio about the detainees. The immigrants, who came from China, Japan, India, Russia and elsewhere, faced overcrowded and unsanitary conditions at Angel Island. They were typically held for weeks or months, though some were detained for as long as two years. Ultimately, many were deported.Charlton Lee, a Chinese American violist in the quartet, had pitched the idea of an Angel Island project to Huang, who had previously collaborated with Del Sol, including on chamber performances of Huang’s music ahead of the American premiere of his first opera, “Dr. Sun Yat-sen,” in 2014. Lee, who had been impressed by Huang’s ability to set Chinese text to music, said he thought the history of Angel Island had been neglected.“We’re staring at Angel Island all the time — it’s in the middle of the bay — but people don’t know about the detention center,” he said. “They don’t know about the plight of these immigrants who were trying to come here, start a new life and were just stuck.”Members of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street rehearsing in Brooklyn.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn 2018, Huang and the quartet visited the island, now a state park. They examined the poems, written in classical Chinese, in which detainees described feelings of anger, fear and homesickness. They began to improvise inside the barracks, with members of the quartet accompanying Huang as he sang a melody in Chinese.“Being in that spot — it was haunting,” he said, “but it was also heartwarming to bring something alive back to a place that was so dead.”Huang selected a few poems to set to music: “The Seascape,” “When We Bade Farewell” and “Buried Beneath Clay and Earth.” He added in historical writings to be read aloud with accompaniment by the quartet. These included a discussion of the Los Angeles massacre in 1871, when a mob shot or hanged at least 18 Chinese residents; a list of questions used by American immigration officials in the late 1800s to assess whether Asian women were prostitutes; and an essay by Henry Josiah West from 1873 warning of a “Chinese invasion.”“The question” West wrote, “is shall we submit to the growth of this heathen Chinese Republic?”In 2021, after a yearlong delay caused by the pandemic, Huang and the Del Sol Quartet returned to Angel Island for the premiere.Lee said it was jarring to hear the music in the barracks, which he had seen as dark and foreboding.“It felt like the spirits were just coming out of the walls,” he said. “It’s almost like we performed some kind of ritual and all of a sudden these people who had suffered — they were able to smile.”Immigrants arriving at Angel Island’s quarantine station around 1911.Fotosearch/Getty ImagesSince then, “Angel Island” has been performed several more times, including in Berkeley, Calif., Washington and Singapore.Huang has recently expanded the piece, adding another poem, “The Ocean Encircles a Lone Peak,” and a movement about Fang Lang, a Chinese survivor of the Titanic shipwreck who was barred from entering the United States because of the Exclusion Act.The New York production is the first full staging of “Angel Island.” Dancers are featured throughout, and film plays an important role, with historical footage and videos of Angel Island, shot by Bill Morrison, projected on screens. Choir members mimic carving Chinese characters and poems.“This is really the manifestation of a community,” Ozawa said. “You want the audience fully immersed and to experience a sense of hypnotic ritualism.”And, he added, he would like the story to resonate with a broad audience.“Angel Island is still living and breathing within the bodies of so many Asian Americans,” he said. “My true hope is that we all recall, connect and learn from our personal heritage, our past, our ancestor’s experience coming to America, but also feel empowered by the material to ignite discourse, empathy and understanding toward those newly coming into the country.”The director Matthew Ozawa, center, said: “This is really the manifestation of a community. You want the audience fully immersed and to experience a sense of hypnotic ritualism.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe detainees’ poems remain at the center of “Angel Island” and give the work its spiritual grounding.Huang, who came to the United States as a student in the 1990s, stopping first in San Francisco, said he could relate to many of the poems.“There is that same feeling of what it means to leave your family behind,” he said, “and of coming to a place in hopes of a new life and not knowing what is ahead of you.”At the end of “Angel Island,” members of the choir leave the stage and encircle the audience, a gesture meant to help them feel part of the community of detainees.The final poem in the oratorio describes leaving Angel Island and preparing to return home. It speaks of jingwei, a mythological bird that tries to fill the sea with twigs and stones:Obstacles have been put in my way for half a year,Melancholy and hate gather on my face.Now that I must return to my country,I have toiled like the jingwei bird in vain. More