Eliana Willis

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    Seth Meyers Calls Trump ‘Desperate’ for Likes

    Meyers said the former president’s return to X shows he yearns “for the spotlight and for some praise or positive coverage from anyone, anywhere.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘The Worst of All Worlds’Former President Donald Trump’s conversation with Elon Musk continued to be fodder for late night jokes on Wednesday.Seth Meyers called the X livestream on Monday night “disastrous,” saying Trump only returned to the platform because he “is desperate for the spotlight and for some praise or positive coverage from anyone, anywhere.”“OK, but it’s not what it used to be, dude. That’s like going back to your old high school and finding out it’s a Big Lots now.” — SETH MEYERS“The plan backfired because the conversation was the worst of all worlds. It was insane, it was a tactical disaster and it was boring.” — SETH MEYERS“Also, I like how Musk teed up this conversation as being for open-minded independent voters. You know how independent voters are always looking for good information on the fifth-most-popular feature of a dying app. Why don’t you just hold a round table in the chat feature on Words with Friends?” — SETH MEYERS“But, sure, finally, someone speaking to the American voter who believes bacon is too expensive and nuclear war isn’t that bad.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (V.P. Edition)“According to a new report, former President Trump is furious at his campaign staff for letting him make the ‘terrible decision of picking JD Vance as his V.P.’ Yeah, Trump regrets pairing up with Vance. He’s like, ‘This is why I always sign a prenup.’” — JIMMY FALLON“According to FiveThirtyEight, Tim Walz has a net favorability rating of plus 5, while JD Vance is at minus 9.4. I think what we get from this is, apparently, people want ‘coach’ — not ‘couch.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Meanwhile, ahead of the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are taking a bus tour together through Pennsylvania. Yeah, and this is interesting — this is interesting — it’s the same bus the Democrats threw President Biden under.” — JIMMY FALLON“Former Vice President Mike Pence said in a recent interview that he cannot endorse former President Trump because Trump wanted him to overturn the 2020 election, and he can’t endorse Kamala Harris because that’s third base, and he’s married.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingJanet McTeer imitated what it was like to work with her “Kaos” co-star Jeff Goldblum on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightBillie Eilish will take The Colbert Questionert on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutMissy Elliott onstage at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Monday night.Alexis SmithThe multifaceted music artist Missy Elliott’s first headlining tour in her 30-year career is as exhilarating as it is visually and theatrically ambitious. More

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    ‘Life and Trust’ Review: Choose Your Own Faustian Adventure

    A new theatrical experience in the Financial District is composed of 25 individual stories, but it’s hard to make sense of any of them.In one room in Conwell Tower, a stately skyscraper in the Financial District, a police officer strips off his shirt and flogs himself — passionately, even sensually — before coolly donning his uniform again. At the end of a long hall, a woman performs a Houdini-esque escape from a straitjacket. Elsewhere, in a dark underground boxing ring, two men trade punches in a cinematic fight scene where lights flash and dim with each maneuver, the bodies sometimes moving in slow motion like scenes from a “Rocky” film.What are these characters’ motivations, and what is their connection to one another? Your guess is as good as mine.In “Life and Trust” — the new theatrical experience from Emursive, producers of the popular “Sleep No More” with Punchdrunk — the story never rises to meet the spectacle, creating a visually appealing yet narratively incoherent piece of exploration theater.The show, directed by Teddy Bergman, begins on Oct. 23, 1929, the evening before the stock market crash. The audience has been invited to a “prospective investors fete” by the head of the Life and Trust Bank, a J.G. Conwell, who has made his fortune mass-producing a mysterious bright green syrup that’s something between a panacea and an addictive opiate.There is, of course, something shady about this invitation: Early in the show a suited man purrs to the audience, “If you choose to invest with us, you’re one of ours … forever.” (It turns out “forever” means roughly three hours in this site-specific show … which can sometimes feel like an eternity.) Faced with the imminent fall of his financial empire, Conwell takes a devilish offer to travel back in time to the Gilded Age.In this earlier time of glamour and pleasures, we meet a younger Conwell and dozens of other characters based on real historical figures, from eugenicists to magicians. The show is mostly dialogue-free; acrobatic choreography by the Tony nominees Jeff and Rick Kuperman is meant to fill some of the role speech would. Sometimes it works, as when one character shows otherworldly control over another through mirrored movements — a wave of one’s hand seems to command another’s body to tumble forward. Other instances, particularly during scenes of confrontation or seduction, when the characters’ bodies repeatedly swoon into one another, feel less novel and instead highlight how unclear the relationships and stories are.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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    Tony Winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Returns to Broadway With ‘Purpose’

    Branden Jacobs-Jenkins had Broadway success this year with a drama starring Sarah Paulson. In February, he’ll return with a new play directed by Phylicia Rashad.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins won a Tony Award in June for the Broadway production of “Appropriate,” his blistering play about a white Southern family grappling with some serious baggage.This season, Jacobs-Jenkins will return to Broadway, now with “Purpose,” a stormy play about a Black Midwestern family wrestling with its own legacy.“Purpose,” which had a well-received run earlier this year at Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, is to begin previews Feb. 25 and to open in mid-March at the Helen Hayes Theater. The Broadway production is being directed by Phylicia Rashad, who also directed the play at Steppenwolf; Rashad, best known for “The Cosby Show,” has won two Tony Awards as an actor, for “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Skeleton Crew”; this will be her first time directing on Broadway.Set in contemporary Chicago, “Purpose” is about the Jaspers, a civically engaged family of preachers and politicians. There are some parallels to Jesse Jackson’s family, but the story is fictional.In the play, the family gathers at the home of its patriarch — a civil rights activist and preacher who had marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — to welcome the eldest son, a politician, home from prison as his wife prepares to serve her own sentence. The gathering is complicated by the presence of the younger son, a divinity school dropout, who shows up with an unexpected friend.The critic Chris Jones, writing in The Chicago Tribune, called it an “absolutely not-to-be-missed” play.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, with the Tony for best revival of a play for “Appropriate.”Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressPhylicia Rashad, with her Tony for best actress in a play for “Skeleton Crew” in 2022. This will be her Broadway directorial debut.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJacobs-Jenkins, 39, has for a decade been touted as among the nation’s most important young playwrights. He is a two-time Pulitzer finalist (for “Gloria” and “Everybody”), but “Appropriate” was his first play on Broadway. It took so long for it to get there that the production, which starred Sarah Paulson, was deemed a revival and won the Tony Award in that category. Now, Jacobs-Jenkins is working on a musical adaptation of Prince’s “Purple Rain” that will have an initial production in Minneapolis next spring, while also preparing to return to Broadway with “Purpose.” (And before then, he has a new Off Broadway show this fall: “Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!” at Soho Rep.)“I’m shocked, honored, surprised, confused, nervous,” Jacobs-Jenkins said in a phone interview, referring to having two Broadway plays in a row. “I definitely feel like there’s some kind of turnover: In this post-recovery period, lots of surprising things are happening.”“I feel like suddenly my cohort is stepping into some new space that wasn’t available to us before,” he added.And are “Appropriate” and “Purpose” related? “Not really,” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “But it wouldn’t be ridiculous to read them against each other.”Though the nonprofit Second Stage Theater owns the Helen Hayes Theater, this will be a commercial production. The lead producers include David Stone and Marc Platt, who are the lead producers of “Wicked”; the film producer Debra Martin Chase; the actress LaChanze; and Rashad V. Chambers, Aaron Glick and Steppenwolf. More

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    How ‘The Challenge’ Lasted 40 Seasons and Changed Reality Stardom

    When Johnny Devenanzio swiveled in his chair and playfully called for his mother to bring some meatloaf, he knew exactly what he was doing. In his impression of Will Ferrell’s man-child from “Wedding Crashers,” he was really evoking Johnny Bananas, the Peter Pan-like alter ego he has played for much of his adult life on the grandfather of all reality-competition shows: MTV’s “The Challenge.”Devenanzio, 42, said he’d likely be a stay-at-home-son had his life not so permanently veered into the world of reality television. Or maybe he would have used his Penn State college degree to enter the world of finance. Of his large flock of one-time castmates, many have forged ahead with new careers, gotten married, started families. Not Devenanzio.“When I die I’m going to donate my brain to science to study what the long-term side effects of reality TV has been,” Devenanzio said over a Zoom interview. “Because I have literally clocked more hours than anyone on the show.”Devenanzio spoke just before embarking for Vietnam to film the 40th season of “The Challenge,” the flagship show on which he has appeared in more than half the seasons. Subtitled “Battle of the Eras,” the new season (premiering on Aug. 14) will feature 40 cast members representing various generations of the show vying for a slice of a million-dollar prize.That’s a long way from the show’s summer camp-vibes origin. The series premiered before the first Real Housewife ever chucked a drink, ahead of any chef-judge barking, “Hands up, utensils down,” and earlier than anyone surviving to outwit, outplay and outlast their competition. “The Challenge” even outstayed MTV predecessors like “The Real World” and “Road Rules,” which initially served as feeders for contestants to enter the show.The often harrowing daily challenges may be the underpinnings of the show, whether leaping from cars suspended over water or trying to fling fellow castmates off moving trucks.Paramount+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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    Late Night Recaps Musk’s and Trump’s Two-Hour Chat on X

    Stephen Colbert called it “a big night for weird old rich guys with no friends.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Excuses, ExcusesAfter a glitchy start, Elon Musk had a two-hour conversation with former President Donald Trump on X on Monday night.Stephen Colbert called it “a big night for weird old rich guys with no friends.”“But here’s the thing about Trump doing anything on Twitter now: It just reminds people of the awful reason he was banned to begin with.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe broadcast was delayed 40 minutes after its scheduled start, which Musk blamed on a cyberattack. Musk later implied it was done to silence Trump.“[imitating Trump] Hey, there. Lying is my thing, buddy.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“[imitating Trump] Stay in your lane, Elon. Oh wait, you can’t because you’re in a self-driving Tesla. Boom, you’re roasted by your Tesla. It’s on fire.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s nice to know the guy who builds self-driving cars and spaceships hasn’t quite figured out how to broadcast a phone call.” — JIMMY FALLON“According to CNN fact checkers, former President Trump made at least 20 false claims during his interview last night with Elon Musk, starting with, ‘It’s great to be here.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Sufferin’ Succotash Edition)“Elon Musk interviewed former President Trump live last night on X, and however crazy you think it was, it was crazier.” — SETH MEYERS“Also, what’s going on with his voice? He sounds like a sugared-up kid on Halloween who won’t take out his plastic vampire teeth.” — SETH MEYERS“I know the guy’s big on slurs, but this is next level.” — DESI LYDIC, guest host of “The Daily Show,” on Trump’s speech sometimes sounding slurred during the interview“[imitating Sylvester the Cat] Sufferin’ succotash!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Can we get the guy some Fixodent?” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe actress Elizabeth Banks played jinx with Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe actress Janet McTeer will sit down on Wednesday with Jeff Goldblum, her “Kaos” co-star and the guest host this week on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutPatti Smith.Vagabond Video/Getty Images.A new documentary about Electric Lady Studios highlights the Greenwich Village institution where artists like Jimi Hendrix, Patti Smith and Frank Ocean have recorded tracks. More

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    ‘Industry’ Blends ‘Succession’ With ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

    Set in the high-pressure world of investment banking, the series, now in Season 3, started out unremarkably but has since become appointment viewing.When “Industry,” a jargony drama about climbing the ladder in the investment banking industry, debuted back in 2020, it was clunky and too generic, and it often telegraphed its twists. But the show found its sea legs, and its slick second season was a ruthless, breathless treat — fast and good-mean. Each episode turned the temperature up and up and up, taking the conflict among our miserable bank bébés from a simmer to an aggressive boil.Then it cranked things even hotter, turning steam to plasma in its last moments — a wilder, more significant phase change.Season 3, which began on Sunday, picks up a few months into this shift. Harper (Myha’la) is licking her wounds after her ouster from the high-pressure London firm Pierpoint, but she has landed at FutureDawn, the female-led, ostensibly socially-conscious fund from Season 2. She is working as an assistant, well outside — and, in her eyes, well beneath — her biz-whiz skill set, but she has never been one to follow workplace rules. She aligns herself with an equally disgruntled senior portfolio manager, Petra (Sarah Goldberg, of “Barry” fame), and starts sharpening her knives.“Industry” can sometimes feel like “Succession Jr.” with its icy palate, its appetite for financial lingo, its characters’ soulless scheming and lines like “I haven’t done blow since 9/11” and “the only famous salesman is Willy Loman.” The incessant shouting, lies, secrecy and debt recall “The Bear,” and its snappy critiques of faux liberalism remind me of “Hacks.” (“I never watch [porn] … unless it’s directed by women,” brags one guy, on a private jet.)But the show it reminds me of most is still “Grey’s Anatomy”: “Industry” also begins on everyone’s first day, with our crew of newbies jockeying for top spots and hooking up with each other, enduring grueling hours and harsh — alluring — mentorship. The rookies’ ingenuity is sometimes valorized, but sometimes it is illegal, and sometimes super-duper illegal. Each character’s family of origin has some murky secret, and none of them are quite sure whether they should be ride-or-die loyal to one another or “all’s fair in work and war” competitors.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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    ‘Bad Monkey,’ Bad Deer, Bad Weather: The Fun of Filming in Florida

    Alex Moffat, an actor and comedian best known for his work on “Saturday Night Live,” rarely shouts at deer. But during a tense scene in the new crime comedy “Bad Monkey,” a Key deer, a member of an endangered species native to the Florida Keys, kept entering the frame. In one exasperated moment, Moffat, in character as a disreputable real estate developer, turned to the deer and shouted, “Go back to the woods or whatever!”The line wasn’t in the script. But it’s definitely in the show.Developed by Bill Lawrence and debuting Wednesday on Apple TV+, “Bad Monkey” tracks a cop turned health inspector, Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn), who pursues a case involving a severed arm, Medicare fraud, voodoo-adjacent witchcraft and a menacing capuchin. It is based on Carl Hiaasen’s novel of the same title, and as with most Hiaasen tales, it is set in a version of the sunshine state defined by raw natural beauty and equally raw Florida-man shenanigans.Not a lot of shows shoot in Florida — blame the lack of film infrastructure; blame the absence of tax breaks; blame the deer and the gnats and the 99 percent humidity. Even shows set in the state will typically shoot in North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana or, as in the case of Lawrence’s Florida-centric comedy “Cougar Town,” Los Angeles. This is understandable. When you film in Culver City, you rarely need to hire armed alligator wranglers.Hiaasen, a former Miami Herald columnist, had been burned by Hollywood before. He strongly preferred a Florida shoot, especially for the scenes set in the Keys.“There’s nowhere in California that looks like that,” Hiaasen said.Lawrence (“Ted Lasso,” “Shrinking”), who had long had his sights on “Bad Monkey,” made that happen.“Feeling authentically Florida and a little sweaty and dirty, it really mattered,” he said.“We wanted to really capture the nature and the beauty of the state,” said Lawrence, right, with the actor Ronald Peet. Scenes set in the Bahamas, such as the one above, were also shot in Florida.John Brawley/ACSWe 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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    When I Get Anxious, These Videos Help Calm My Mind

    Tunnel through time with vintage B-roll.It was a grainy video, autoplaying in my Facebook feed, that first grabbed my attention. It seemed vaguely familiar — like a home movie from my childhood in suburban Boston but without the main characters, leaving only a warm, generic 1980s ambience. In the clip, kids in wide-collared shirts amble around a school cafeteria with burgers, tater tots and little square boxes of chocolate milk served by lunch ladies in those big buglike eyeglasses my grandmother used to wear. The video ended after about two minutes. Next, I watched a street glide by from the window of a moving vehicle: Kenmore Square, Boston, January 1977. The camera panned across storefronts — Strawberries, Paperback Booksmith, College Donuts — but I didn’t recognize anything until it zoomed out and the famous Citgo sign was revealed, perched atop the building where it still sits today.Discovering these videos felt like time-traveling back to some precise moment when nothing of note happened. They are just short, contextless clips of old B-roll — the background film cut into broadcasts to break up the main footage — culled from the collections of WGBH, a 69-year-old Boston public-television station. In 2018, James Auclair, a station employee, began regularly posting the videos to social media. They infiltrated my own Facebook algorithm in the fall of 2023, which, it turns out, was just when I needed them. That August, I eagerly applied for a dream-job faculty position at a university, and I knew I was in for months of consistent, nagging anxiety about my professional future. When I came across the footage Auclair was posting under the handle GBH Archives (they dropped the “W” a few years ago), I was hooked: Here, finally, was a reprieve from the swirl of negative thoughts in my head.I’ve devoured, by now, countless hours of B-roll. I’ve watched shoppers peruse CDs at the long-shuttered Tower Records on Newbury Street in the ’90s, transporting me back to Saturdays in high school when my friends and I browsed the rap and hip-hop racks for hours. Cars as big as boats — station wagons, sedans and vans like my parents drove — roll over the Tobin Bridge in 1979; drivers reach out their arms to pass cash and coins to toll attendants. I’ve watched ice skaters gliding over the frozen Charles River in the late ’70s and hairsprayed teenagers in leather and oversize sweaters smoking cigarettes outside their high school in the ’80s.I’m not the only one hooked on these B-roll clips: YouTube is full of “retro B-roll” material, and GBH Archives alone has more than 200,000 combined followers on Facebook, X and Instagram. For some viewers, the appeal is pure nostalgia — many comment wistfully on the absence of cellphones or the predominance of suits and ties and dresses. Others note changes in the ever-evolving cityscape. Every so often, someone recognizes their younger self in a video.Where the format of television news can crowd out thought, these videos create space for it.What I love most is that the videos contain no narrative; they feel like ambient music — hypnotic, meditative. Rather than tell you what to think or fear, they just show you things. There’s a funny intellectual twist here: Television is an entertainment medium, and the primary purpose of these B-roll clips was to keep viewers visually engaged so they wouldn’t get bored watching a single shot of a newscaster talking. Watching this remediated B-roll subverts that purpose. There are no quick shots and snappy edits, no breaking news alerts or sensational chyrons, just slow and boring slices of life. Where the format of television news can crowd out thought, these videos create space for it. 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