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    Trevor Noah Brings ‘The Daily Show’ to Georgia

    Noah kicked off a week of taping in Atlanta on Monday ahead of next week’s big elections.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.Georgia on My MindTrevor Noah kicked off a week of taping “The Daily Show” in Atlanta on Monday night.“Georgia is the epicenter of America’s elections right now,” Noah said. “It decides everything.” One such race, he said, was the contest between the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican opponent Herschel Walker, who he was shocked to report are currently “neck and neck.”“I know Walker is all neck, but what is happening?” Noah said.“Every second thing the man says turns out to be a lie. He walks around with a fake police badge, yeah? He pretended he was an F.B.I. agent, all right? He claimed he was anti-abortion, even though he apparently paid for one. He claimed he had only one kid even though he has, like, 1,000. Oh, and he told people he graduated in the top 1 percent of his class at the University of Georgia, and it turned out he never graduated at all. At all. Like, at this point, I want to meet the Herschel Walker that Herschel Walker thinks he is, right? Because at this point, at this point, everything — like, he treats real life the way we treat dating apps.” — TREVOR NOAHNoah noted the Democrats are bringing out “the big guns” ahead of next week’s election, including “Netflix’s very own Barack Obama.”“This race is so important, it even got Obama off the beach.” — TREVOR NOAHObama spoke in support of Warnock at a rally where he said he wouldn’t trust Walker to pilot a plane.“Wow, really? Really, President Obama, really? You are going to say that about a man who graduated in the top 1 percent of pilot school? How dare you! [imitating Herschel Walker] ‘A lot of people don’t know this about me, Herschel, but I was in “Top Gun.” That movie was about me. My name in the ’80s was Pete Maverick.’” — TREVOR NOAH“I love how Obama roasts you with, like, that signature swag. He makes it sound so polite, but he’s roasting the [expletive] out of you.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (The Biggest Troll of All Edition)“In other lunatic billionaire news, Elon Musk is the new owner of Twitter, and in the first 12 hours after he took over, promising free, unadulterated speech, use of the ‘n’ word went up almost 500 percent. So, mission accomplished, Elon.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The company blamed it on trolls, but of all the trolls on Twitter, none are trollier than the troll who just bought it.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Elon Musk tweeted something that was considered misinformation and then deleted it later because it was a false conspiracy theory, which is awkward when you’re the owner of Twitter.” — JIMMY FALLON“Here was the email Musk received. It said, ‘Dear me — I regret to inform me that my tweet violated my terms of service, so I will have to ask me to delete my tweet as soon as me can. If I do not delete my tweet, I will be forced to do it for me. If I-you-me have any questions, you-me should contact me at our-us’s earliest convenience. Yours truly, you.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Today, he fired the entire board, and he’s now floating the idea that verified users may have to pay $20 a month to retain their blue check marks. Not his worst idea. His worst idea would be buying Twitter.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon announced his new holiday duet with Dolly Parton, “Almost Too Early for Christmas,” on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe Broadway cast of “Almost Famous” will perform on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutThe last record to sell one million copies in a week was Taylor Swift’s “Reputation,” in 2017. Mario Anzuoni/ReutersTaylor Swift’s new album “Midnights” debuted with the biggest weekly total sales for any LP since Adele’s “25” in 2015. More

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    Review: Star-Crossed Lovers in Need of a Divine Assist

    Andrew Rincón’s play about reigniting passions in the heavens and the bedroom is a jumble of genres at 59E59 Theaters.Tired of digesting all the world’s heartbreak, Cupid calls it quits in Andrew Rincón’s “I Wanna F*ck Like Romeo and Juliet.” The play, a New Light Theater Project production having its premiere at 59E59 Theaters, is experiencing a similar existential crisis. Despite appealing performances, smooth direction by Jesse Jou, and some touching moments, this cosmic look at the pains of love aims wobbly arrows at too many marks.Seeing his friend Cupid (Jacqueline Guillén), the goddess of love, so distraught, Saint Valentine (Greg Cuellar) tries to remind her of affection’s earthly charms by taking her to Hackensack, N.J., where a young couple in the middle of a breakup might provide the challenge she needs to get back in the spirit.That couple, Alejandro (a sturdy Juan Arturo) and Benny (Ashton Muñiz, a soothing presence with comedic chops), have decided to separate after six years together, but Valentine thinks the relationship is worth saving. Cupid and Valentine each pick one to take on a journey of self-discovery, with the goal of guiding them back to each other. These pilgrimages, however, lead to hastily mentioned histories of internalized shame and sexual abuse that overburden the play’s final 20 minutes.Rincón dabbles in the poetic, mixing the mortals’ sometimes self-help-sounding domestic discourse with grandiose statements of love everlasting from the divine duo, who are prone to endless arguments. (That said, it is Alejandro who speaks the childish title phrase, a romanticization of Shakespeare’s text not meant to read as satire.) The clash highlights the play’s confusion as to whether it wants to be a comedy about meddling powers, or a drama about a couple whose breakup undergoes divine intervention. Brittany Vasta’s two-level set, nicely split between the heavens and the bedroom, makes a stronger case for this duality.The same can’t be said for the script, which is untidy in its overuse of Spanglish. Aside from a great joke when a character is shocked to discover the love goddess is a Latina (“Did you really think Cupid could be anything but?”), the Spanish in the text, liberally sprinkled throughout, lacks cohesion because its significance hasn’t been established. When it is used to convey meaningful points, I wondered if non-speakers would be able to follow along, or what Hispanic viewers were supposed to gain. It’s maddening when another tongue is used as a crutch, a substitute for personality that winds up exoticizing the language it sets out to exalt, or “normalize.” If a sentiment lacks power when expressed without a show of bilingualism, it does not gain it through translation.At times it seems as if the play could have revolved around Betti (Elizabeth Ramos), a romantically inexperienced dental hygienist Benny befriends and starts dating, somewhat platonically. Ramos’s smallness during her first scene gives way to an explosive physical performance as Betti comes into her own and experiences first love (with Cupid, no less). Through sheer allure, the actress turns a character largely superfluous to the already jumbled story into the production’s most valuable, displaying the irresistibility of earnest hope in a work that too often dips into its bathos.I Wanna F*ck Like Romeo and JulietThrough Nov. 5 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ and ‘Below Deck Adventure’

    A new series based on the classic French novel premieres on Starz. And a spinoff of the popular series begins on Bravo.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Oct. 31 — Nov. 6. Details and times are subject to change.MondayHOCUS POCUS (1993) 9 p.m. on Freeform. This film’s original theatrical release can only be described as a flop (it only made $39 million domestically after a $28 million budget). But after years of airing on the Disney Channel and ABC Family, it has become a Halloween favorite. It stars Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as the Sanderson sisters — three witches who are accidentally conjured back to life by two teenagers. There’s also a talking cat, a zombie and lots of soul sucking. The long awaited sequel was released last month.TuesdayBELOW DECK ADVENTURE 9 p.m. on Bravo. Overbearing guests, boatmances and explosive fights, all while crammed into a couple rooms underwater, are part and parcel of the “Below Deck” franchise. This edition raises the stakes by taking all the glamour of yachting and mixing it with extreme activities — including paragliding, exploring caves and helicopter rides. This season features a whole new roster of yachties — you can be guaranteed to see a “Real Housewives” star onboard.THE DAILY SHOW WITH TREVOR NOAH PRESENTS: JORDAN KLEPPER FINGERS THE MIDTERMS 11:30 p.m. on Comedy Central. With the midterm elections next week, reports of election denial or misinformation are still running rampant. Though there is no evidence of tampering with the 2020 election, 28 percent of voters said they had little to no faith in the accuracy of this year’s midterm election results. In this 30-minute special, Jordan Klepper, doing what he does best, talks to the voters at the heart of these issues along the campaign trail.WednesdayFrom left, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in “Baby Mama.”K.C. Bailey/Universal StudiosBABY MAMA (2008) 6:30 p.m. on Starz. What happens when Kate (Tina Fey), a 37-year-old, single executive, decides she wants a baby? She hires Angie (Amy Poehler), a less-than-responsible woman who is happy to trade the use of her womb for some extra cash. The duo end up living together after Angie has a fight with her common-law husband, Carl (Dax Shepard). From there comes lots of shenanigans, mishaps but also some moments that tug on your heartstrings.ThursdayTHE SEVENTH VEIL (1945) 8 p.m. on TCM. Ann Todd plays Francesca, a piano player who has a psychiatric disorder that makes it impossible for her to play. Herbert Lom is Dr. Larsen, a psychiatrist specializing in hypnosis, who works with Francesca to unveil her fears one by one — by the end she is able to play piano again and has clarity on whom she loves. “The lifting of the last veil from the burdened brain of the film’s heroine, a concert pianist tortured by complexes, makes for subtle and often exciting drama,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The New York Times.FridayLOPEZ VS LOPEZ 8 p.m. on NBC. In this new sitcom, the comedian George Lopez and his daughter, Mayan Lopez, play characters of their same names with inspiration drawn from their real lives — they aren’t the first ones to do it (see: Miley Cyrus and Billy-Ray Cyrus in “Hannah Montana”). Selenis Leyva and Matt Shively round out the cast as Mayan’s mother and her boyfriend.GREAT PERFORMANCES 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). After a $550 million renovation, David Geffen Hall in Manhattan reopened in early October. To celebrate returning home, the New York Philharmonic will perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with its music director, Jaap van Zweden.SaturdayKate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.”Michael Gibson/Paramount PicturesHOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS (2003) 6:30 p.m. on Pop. Why are the leads from this era of rom-coms always journalists? Here Kate Hudson stars as an advice columnist, Andie, who sets out to write an article about how to make a man leave in you 10 days. Matthew McConaughey plays Ben who, simultaneously, makes a bet that he can get a woman to fall in love with him in 10 days. As fate would have it, they set their respective targets on each other, and both of their plans start to backfire.SundayDANGEROUS LIAISONS 8 p.m. on Starz. Inspired by the classic novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos of the same name, this show tells the origin story of how Marquise de Merteuil (Alice Englert) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Nicholas Denton) met. Taking place in Paris, they use their mutual connections and cunning skills to scale their way up the ranks of society.FAMILY KARMA 9 p.m. on Bravo. Love is in the air on the third season of this reality show, which follows a group of seven Indian Americans as they navigate their careers, family and relationships. This season we see Vishal Parvani and Richa Sadana’s wedding, as well as the lead-up to Amrit Kapai and Nicholas Kouchoukos’s nuptials. With everyone at different stages of life and relationships, there is plenty of tension and celebration.SPECTOR 9 p.m. on Showtime. This four-part docu-series revolves around the night of Feb. 3, 2003, when the actress Lana Clarkson was shot and killed in the music producer Phil Spector’s home. After a night out in Los Angeles, the two went back to his mansion, and then hours later Clarkson was found with a single bullet through her head. Through the lengthy trial, the defense tried to argue that Clarkson had shot herself, but the jury found Spector guilty, sentencing him to 19 years to life in prison, where he died last year of Covid-19 complications. The series shares stories about both Clarkson and Spector, with his conviction as the backdrop. More

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    Review: Off Broadway, Jim Parsons Meets the Small Bang Theory

    In a revival of the 2002 musical “A Man of No Importance,” the star of “The Big Bang Theory” achieves something more delicate.You couldn’t have predicted from “Ragtime,” which ran on Broadway for two years in the late 1990s, that its authors would follow up with something as vastly different as “A Man of No Importance.” Yet that’s what Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, who wrote the songs, and Terrence McNally, who wrote the book, did in 2002. Their second musical is as quiet, delicate and Irish as its predecessor is loud, meaty and American. Instead of bleating big themes, it ekes feeling from repression in telling the story of a character who does the same.He is Alfie Byrne, a Dublin bus conductor and closeted gay man who in 1964 finds some measure of fulfillment — or at least companionship — among St. Imelda’s Players, the awful amateur theatrical group whose shows he directs in the social hall of his parish church. With Oscar Wilde as his spirit guide, he makes his small-scale art into a life that’s more beautiful than the one the real world gave him.Likewise the lovely revival that opened on Sunday at Classic Stage Company, starring Jim Parsons and directed by John Doyle. Trimmer than the very fine original production at Lincoln Center Theater, and staged on a minimal set (also by Doyle) consisting of a few chairs, mirrors and statuary Marys, it’s a good fit for material that was always modest. Twenty years on, it’s also a good fit for a moment in which closet stories are beginning to lose their currency.In that sense it’s an advantage that Parsons, at 49, is younger by nearly a decade than both Roger Rees, who played Alfie in 2002, and Albert Finney, who originated the role in the 1994 film on which the musical is based. With his confident voice, unlined face and television polish, he never seems hopeless or, viewed from our time, too old for a new start. And after 12 seasons of “The Big Bang Theory,” he knows not only what marks to hit but exactly how to hit them.A.J. Shively, left, as Robbie Fay and Parsons as Alfie Byrne in the musical “A Man Of No Importance” at the Classic Stage Company.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs such, Alfie’s problem is not so much “the love that dare not speak its name” as the personality that won’t shut up. He’s a classic, bossy theatrical misfit, accepted (if only he believed it) at least as much for his oddness as despite it. On the bus each day, he reads poetry to delighted riders, and tries to bring culture even to the handsome young driver he calls, after Wilde’s reckless lover, Bosie — as if the name Robbie Fay weren’t sufficient.At home, though, Alfie locks his bedroom door against the curious eyes of his older sister, Lily, who somehow has not guessed his secret. Lily (Mare Winningham) hopes to marry their neighbor, the butcher Carney (Thom Sesma), but will not do so until her brother is settled. So when Alfie takes an interest in Adele Rice, a new passenger on his bus, Lily tries to push them together, not understanding that Alfie’s interest is purely artistic. He wants Adele (Shereen Ahmed) to play the lead in his new St. Imelda’s production, Wilde’s highly inappropriate “Salome,” with its forbidden lust and “immodest dancing.”The film tells this story straightforwardly if ploddingly, as if it were a bus route. We know from the start that Carney, being a butcher and also a ham, will undermine “Salome,” in which he can only play a minor role. And we know that Adele is not the virginal princess Alfie imagines, nor Robbie fated to be the kissable Jokanaan. The musical paradoxically produces a more streamlined and unpredictable experience by giving it a more ornate frame: McNally’s book imagines Alfie’s story as a production put on by his St. Imelda Players.This allows Flaherty and Ahrens to customize song forms to suit each moment and explore genres that fit the milieu — cue the fiddle and uilleann pipes. Though this occasionally produces some stage Irish mush, it also produces some first-rate musical storytelling in numbers like “Books,” in which Lily and Carney sniff at Alfie’s suspicious habits, and “The Streets of Dublin,” in which Robbie (A.J. Shively) drags Alfie out for a high-spirited night on the town.In allowing for shorter scenes and simpler transitions. McNally’s frame is a perfect match for Doyle’s essentialist aesthetic, in which the first question asked seems to be: How little do we need? (Call it his Small Bang Theory.) As in his 2013 “Passion,” he has shrunk the cast by about a quarter (in this case, from 17 to 13) and the running time similarly. As in his Tony-winning revival of “The Color Purple,” he abjures almost all specific signs of setting. And as in so much of what he directs, particularly his cycle of Stephen Sondheim musicals, he has reduced the band by having some actors play instruments; new orchestrations by Bruce Coughlin mean you never feel cheated.Few shows benefit from all these deprivations at once, and “A Man of No Importance” does suffer slightly in its final third as it begins to reveal too much skeleton. Even if you know the story you may wonder which character an actor is now playing, or whether you’re in the church or the pub. You may also feel the lack of choreography, especially with the fine dancer Shively in the cast.But for the most part, this being a show about the possibilities of even the most minimal stage, a minimal stage makes an apt enough setting, and the style enhances more than it squelches. Doyle even manages the equivalent of a hat trick, when an actor plays a tambourine that, in turn, plays a plate.At their best, Doyle’s small triumphs of restraint and husbandry add up to something large. “The Cuddles Mary Gave,” a song whose title seems to promise sickly sweetness, becomes powerfully specific as performed across the grain, without sentimentality, by William Youmans. Nor have I heard a sound so mournful as the one produced in the show’s saddest moment by the accordion: a wheeze of despair.And with actors of such ample imagination — including Winningham, so vinegary as Lily, and Ahmed so exquisitely reticent as Adele — the circumstances informing trenchant performances need not be visible to the audience. They need only be palpable. The rest is up to us.In other words, Doyle won’t hand us emotion dead on a plate, or even on a tambourine. That approach has earned him lots of fans and detractors since his New York breakthrough with “Sweeney Todd” in 2005; they are often the same people. It’s fitting that as he steps down after six years as Classic Stage’s artistic director, he does so with such a rich example of what he brings to the table — or, rather, takes away from it. I hope he keeps doing so. To adapt a great Sondheim lyric: Give us less to see.A Man of No ImportanceThrough Dec. 18 at Classic Stage Company, Manhattan; classicstage.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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    ‘S.N.L.’ Takes on Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz and Kari Lake

    Tom Hanks also returned to “Saturday Night Live” for a Halloween episode hosted by Jack Harlow. Any questions?The rising fortunes of some Republican candidates with no previous electoral experience allowed “Saturday Night Live” to try out some new (or newish) political impressions in its opening sketch this weekend.The broadcast, on which the rapper Jack Harlow was both host and musical guest, began with a parody of “PBS NewsHour,” with Heidi Gardner playing the anchor Judy Woodruff. “We’re what your grandma is talking about when she says, ‘I saw this on the news,’” she explained.Introducing three Republicans who are running for office this November, she began with Kenan Thompson, who played Herschel Walker, the Senate candidate from Georgia. “Hello, Judas,” he said. “My name is Herschel Walker, Texas Ranger, and I am running for president of the United Airlines.”Mikey Day played Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, who has been criticized for a lack of familiarity with the state. “My Pennsylvania Phillies are in the World Series and I just had a delicious Philadelphia cheese and steak,” he said. “Yum.”And in her first “S.N.L.” appearance this season, Cecily Strong played Kari Lake, the candidate for governor of Arizona. “Great to be with you, Judy, on your sweet little show full of lies,” she said.Asked how he’d been able to maintain his popularity despite several scandals, Thompson replied, “The whole world is a mystery, ain’t it? For example, a Thermos. It keeps the hot things hot, but also the cold things cold. My question is: How do it decide?”Or perhaps it was because voters thought he was fun, Thompson said: “Look, if you want to get on a Jumbotron at the Packers game, you don’t throw on a cardigan and start making sense. You take your shirt off and shake your belly around. That’s what I’m doing and people love me.”Day said that his candidacy was initially perceived as a long shot. But, he added, “I always told myself, you can win this election if you’re honest, if you’re fair and if your opponent has a debilitating medical emergency. So we’re very lucky.”Strong said her strength with voters was her normalcy.“I’m just a regular hometown gal, constantly in soft focus and lit like a ’90s Cinemax soft-core,” she said. “And frankly, I’ve just clicked with many of the wonderful, terrified elderly people here in Arizona, the Florida of the West. Also, I’m a fighter. In my life, I’ve sent back over 2,000 salads and I’m not afraid to do the same thing with democracy.”Asked if she would implement electoral reforms if she won, Strong answered, “I’ll make it easy. If the people of Arizona elect me, I’ll make sure they never have to vote ever again.” She added, “Look, nothing I say can be incendiary because I say it in TV voice. So jump on into Kari Lake, Arizona, because it’s placid and serene on top, but underneath, it’s a whole lot of giardia.”Obligatory Kanye West Sketch of the WeekIn a run that would come later on Weekend Update, the anchor Colin Jost riffed on the last remaining businesses, including Dippin’ Dots, Scrub Daddy and TCBY, that could still cut ties with Ye (the rapper formerly known as Kanye West) for his antisemitic statements. But “S.N.L.” also made hay from a real-life incident earlier this week in which Ye made an unannounced trip to the headquarters of Skechers and was thrown out of the building.In this fake commercial, Skechers employees can’t quite decide between wondering what it might have been like to work with Ye or embracing the minimal amount of cred they’re finally enjoying for turning him away. While Ye may have been known as a fashion-industry disrupter, “we invented shoes you can wash in a washing machine,” Marcello Hernandez said proudly.12-Step Meeting of the WeekThere were a lot of head fakes in “S.N.L.” this week — like, say, following the monologue with a sketch about a Halloween wedding where the best man has dressed as the Joker. Or take this segment that starts off as what appears to be an Alcoholics Anonymous-style recovery meeting, but which quickly becomes the setting for Harlow’s character to pitch the concept for a Pixar movie about anthropomorphic suitcases that travel the world.And when you think the sketch has peaked with a spontaneous singalong of the would-be movie’s feel-good theme song, who should show up to voice its main character but America’s sweetheart and multiple-time “S.N.L.” host Tom Hanks. (And if you’re wondering whether Hanks’s reappearance on a Halloween episode meant he was going to bring back David S. Pumpkins, yes, he brought back David S. Pumpkins.)Fake Movie Trailer of the WeekIn keeping with the spooky spirit of this episode, “S.N.L.” spun a trailer for an ersatz horror movie that claimed to be a collaboration “from the producers of ‘Smile’ and the twisted minds of ‘Morning Joe.’”As its various characters contemplate all the reasons they would not want to see President Biden run for re-election — they worry he would be too old or vulnerable to easy attack ads — they find themselves just as unenthusiastic about the potential candidates that could replace him, an overly familiar roster that includes Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The terrifyingly simple title: “2020 Part 2: 2024.” (Coming in 2023.)Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the emergence of another accuser who said Walker had pressured her to have an abortion.Jost began:This week, Elon Musk officially bought Twitter for $44 billion. Beating out the next highest offer of $0. Musk sent an open letter to advertisers saying that he doesn’t want Twitter to become a free-for-all hellscape. Because that’s his plan for Mars. I honestly don’t understand why people are so worried that Elon is going to ruin Twitter as if it’s this beloved American institution. It’s not like he bought Disneyworld. It’s like he bought the rest of Orlando.Che continued:Herschel Walker denied allegations from a second woman that he pushed her to have an abortion, saying, “I’m done with this foolishness.” Which is also what Walker says when he takes off the condom. The woman claimed that Walker drove her to an abortion clinic, then waited in the parking lot for hours while she had the procedure. Not only that, while he was in the parking lot, he got two more women pregnant. More

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    Why Did It Take HBO So Long to Make Shows About Women?

    An early top executive at the network believed that “the man of the house” paid for cable TV subscriptions. That mind-set affected HBO’s programming for decades.On “House of the Dragon,” Emma D’Arcy plays a would-be queen who is weighing what to do in the face of betrayal. On “Euphoria,” Zendaya plays a high school student who starts using drugs shortly after leaving rehab. On “The White Lotus,” which returns for its second season on Sunday night, Jennifer Coolidge plays a dazed heiress trying to escape her troubles in the comforts of a Sicilian luxury hotel.These characters are the new faces of HBO, the Emmy-magnet cable network that, until recently, specialized in making programs about men for men. In fits and starts over the last two decades, the network has at last begun to move away from the leering lotharios of its early years and the tortured male antiheroes of its middle period to present shows built around complicated women who drive the action.In the 1980s, when HBO was just starting to make original programming, its top executives made a point of appealing to male viewers. It was a strategy that affected the network’s creative output for years to come.Jennifer Coolidge, center, in a scene from Season 2 of “The White Lotus.” Fabio Lovino/HBOEmma D’Arcy, right, with Olivia Cooke in HBO’s latest ratings hit, “House of the Dragon.”Ollie Upton/HBO“I’ve figured out through research, and in my own mind, that the man of the house decided whether to have HBO or not,” said Michael Fuchs, the channel’s top executive when it started to concentrate on original programming, in a 2010 interview with the Television Academy.“I made sure that there were things for men,” he continued. “If commercial television had a female slant, HBO had a male slant.”The network bet big on stand-up comedy specials featuring mostly male comics in the years when it was defining the look and feel of premium cable. Without the restrictions of broadcast TV, George Carlin, Chris Rock and Robin Williams were free to do their routines unfettered.In the 1980s, the network cemented its identity as one that appealed to men when it signed the heavyweight champion Mike Tyson to an exclusive deal. At the same time, HBO started airing the documentary series “Eros America,” which was soon renamed “Real Sex.” It kicked off a run of sex-focused documentary shows, which would include “G String Divas,” “Cathouse” and “Sex Bytes.”HBO’s early forays into scripted programming followed a similar tack. John Landis, an executive producer of “Dream On,” a comedy about a male book editor that made its debut in 1990, used the show’s gratuitous nudity as a selling point. “We have breasts in the script just for the sake of seeing breasts,” he said in a 1992 interview. “Excuse me, but what’s so bad about that?”Susie Fitzgerald, an HBO programming executive from 1984 to 1995, said “Dream On” appealed to her bosses because it was cheap to make and “it featured nudity — female nudity, of course.” She recalled HBO’s research executives preaching that men “controlled the remote.” That line of thinking became a factor in programming decisions, she added.Return to Westeros in ‘House of the Dragon’HBO’s long-awaited “Game of Thrones” prequel series is here.Playing Kingmaker: Fabien Frankel plays Ser Criston Cole, who got to place the crown on the new King of Westeros’s head. He is still not sure how he landed the role.The Princess and the Queen: Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, who portray the grown-up versions of Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, talked about the forces that drive their characters apart — and pull them together.A Man’s Decline: By the eighth episode of the season, Viserys no longer looks like a proud Targaryen king. The actor Paddy Considine discussed the character’s transformation and its meaning.A Rogue Prince: Daemon Targaryen is an agent of chaos. But “he’s got a strange moral compass of his own,” Matt Smith, who portrays him, said.Ms. Fitzgerald, who helped oversee HBO comedy specials starring Ellen DeGeneres, Roseanne Barr and Whoopi Goldberg, was part of the team behind the network’s first series to win widespread acclaim, “The Larry Sanders Show,” about an insecure talk-show host and cocreated by and starring Garry Shandling. Around the time of its debut, Ms. Fitzgerald said she floated the idea that a woman should be the lead of an HBO comedy series. She faced resistance when she brought it up, she said.The beginning of the shift toward productions centered on women did not come about until 1996, with the premiere of “If These Walls Could Talk,” a movie chronicling abortion in three different decades. It was produced by Demi Moore, who also had a leading role in the film.HBO didn’t give the green light to “If These Walls Could Talk” in the hope that it would attract large numbers of viewers and subscribers. The network’s main interest was in doing business with Ms. Moore, who was then at the height of her fame.“If These Walls Could Talk” did have something in common with HBO’s other productions, though: It had a strong point of view — fiercely in favor of abortion — and it was not a fit for broadcast TV or basic cable, which made money by keeping skittish advertisers happy.When the ratings came in, the executives were floored: “If These Walls Could Talk” had attracted the largest audience ever for an HBO production, contradicting its “man-of-the-house” programming strategy.Shortly afterward, HBO bought the option for “Sex and the City,” a book by Candace Bushnell on the lives of single women in Manhattan. The series ran from 1998 to 2004, becoming a cultural touchstone and winning 7 Emmys (out of 54 nominations). It also spawned two feature films, a popular sequel series, “And Just Like That,” for HBO’s streaming service, HBO Max, and countless memes.Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in the long-running HBO series “Sex and the City.”HBO, via Everett CollectionBut just as “Sex and the City” was in the middle of its run, HBO went back to the old playbook, adding “The Mind of the Married Man” to its prime-time schedule. The half-hour series was centered on a married Chicago newspaperman, his married pals and their sex lives. Writing in Entertainment Weekly, the critic Ken Tucker called the show a “rancid little barf-com” and found fault with its “moronic sexism.” And soon after 10 million viewers tuned in for the “Sex and the City” finale, HBO returned to a bro-y sensibility with “Entourage,” about young men on the loose in Hollywood.When Casey Bloys, the current head of programming at HBO, joined the network in 2004, its audience was still largely male, thanks to a cluster of shows — “Oz,” “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” — that chronicled the exploits of male antiheroes and outlaws.“There was definitely a core male 25- to 54-year-old audience,” Mr. Bloys said.Some HBO series appealed to women — Alan Ball’s “True Blood” and Michael Patrick King’s and Lisa Kudrow’s “The Comeback” — but old habits were hard to shake.In 2010, Mr. Bloys and his colleagues in the programming department were impressed by a proposal from a 23-year-old writer and filmmaker, Lena Dunham, for a series about young women in New York. Other executives were against it, partly because of the age of Ms. Dunham’s central characters, who were more than a decade younger than the “Sex and the City” foursome.“The prevailing wisdom of the time was that men basically subscribed,” Mr. Bloys said. “So in conversations around ‘Girls,’ they said we had never done a show with that young a lead and a female lead that young. The idea was young adults were not deciding to subscribe to HBO because they weren’t the head of the household.”After Mr. Bloys and his associates prevailed, “Girls” became a critical hit and fodder for thousands of think pieces. “Veep,” starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a U.S. vice president, was right around the corner.Even so, shows about men remained HBO’s stock in trade, along with certain tropes that had devolved into cliché. In a 2011 essay, “HBO, you’re busted,” Mary McNamara, a critic for The Los Angeles Times, blasted the network for its overreliance on scenes set in strip clubs and brothels.Must every HBO drama, Ms. McNamara lamented, feature shadowy men conducting business against a backdrop of unclad women? She cited “The Sopranos,” “Game of Thrones,” “Rome,” “Deadwood” and “Boardwalk Empire” as the biggest offenders, noting that “HBO has a higher population of prostitutes per capita than Amsterdam or Charlie Sheen’s Christmas card list.”The cast of “The Mind of the Married Man,” a critical flop.Anthony Friedkin/HBOJames Gandolfini as the HBO antihero Tony Soprano.Anthony Neste/Getty ImagesBy the time Mr. Bloys took over the programming department in 2016, 57 percent of viewers of HBO’s Sunday prime-time lineup were male, according to Nielsen. As Mr. Bloys settled into his new role, the network began a reboot of the cultural shift it had attempted two decades earlier with “If These Walls Could Talk” and “Sex and the City.”“My philosophy as a programmer was, if you’ve got a male core, that’s great,” Mr. Bloys said. “You do want to make sure you’re tending to that core audience, but you also have to broaden out from that. You can do both.”As the #MeToo movement ousted men in positions of power in the media industry, the signature HBO protagonist began to change. There were still shows centered on tortured male antiheroes — “Succession,” for one — but more and more, a new character came to the fore: the tough but flawed heroine who is looking to right past wrongs.“Big Little Lies,” starring Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, chronicled a group of women in Monterey, Calif., who band together after one of their husbands, an abuser, is murdered. In “Sharp Objects,” Amy Adams played a self-harming newspaper reporter who investigates the murders of two girls in her Missouri hometown. In “Mare of Easttown,” Kate Winslet immersed herself in the role of a damaged police detective working to solve the murder of a teenage mother in blue-collar Pennsylvania. “I May Destroy You,” a coproduction with the BBC, starred Michaela Coel as a struggling writer who attempts to shed light on her own past rape.Michaela Coel was the star, writer and producer of “I May Destroy You.”HBO, via Associated PressMs. Coel was the creative force behind “I May Destroy You.” Another female writer-producer, Marti Noxon, was the creator of “Sharp Objects,” a limited series based on the novel by Gillian Flynn. But several other HBO shows with female protagonists were led by men: David E. Kelley was the showrunner of “Big Little Lies”; Brad Inglesby created “Mare of Easttown”; and Saverio Costanzo was the creator of HBO’s adaptation of “My Brilliant Friend,” a show adapted from the Neapolitan novels series by Elena Ferrante.HBO reapplied the lesson it had learned from “Girls” when it signed off on “Euphoria,” a series about the drug-fueled escapades of teenagers created by Sam Levinson, with Zendaya in a starring role. Earlier this year, that show became the most-watched HBO program since the network’s biggest hit, “Game of Thrones.”The results of the shift have been evident in the makeup of the audience for HBO, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in November, and the streaming platform that shares its name. According to Nielsen, those watching the cable channel had a 50-50 male-female split in 2021, and 52 percent of HBO Max’s viewers in September were women.“I think that any brand — this is not specific to television — has to evolve,” Mr. Bloys said. “You can’t just kind of become comfortable and think, ‘Well, we know how to do one thing and let’s keep doing it.’” More

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    The ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ Creative Team on Assembling Their Quirky Puzzle

    The toilets wouldn’t stop flushing. The playwright David Lindsay-Abaire was trying to talk about his collaboration with the composer Jeanine Tesori and the director Jessica Stone on their musical, “Kimberly Akimbo,” and in the background, the janitorial staff members of the Booth Theater were cleaning the bathrooms.“I said to Jeanine,” he said, trying to keep a straight face as another toilet flushed, “I wish we could write a musical the way that I write a play, where there’s not a team of other people involved.”Another flush.Tesori stood up, muttering, “I have to close that door myself.” Which prompted Stone to bend over in laughter.“Thank you,” Stone said, as Tesori returned to her seat in the basement lounge of the Broadway theater.“It is on theme,” Lindsay-Abaire said. “Nothing better.”“Isn’t that enough?” Tesori responded. “Doesn’t that say everything?”For the creative team behind “Kimberly Akimbo,” the chaotic energy of this morning fit the musical itself, whose concept seems — on the page, at least — too off-kilter for a shiny Broadway marquee.Victoria Clark, center, as Kimberly with Alli Mauzey, foreground left, and Steven Boyer, foreground right, who play her parents.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA musical dramedy set in New Jersey, “Kimberly Akimbo” tells the story of a teenager named Kimberly (played by Victoria Clark) who has a disease akin to progeria, which causes her to age at a hyperspeed. At 16, she looks 72.It’s far from a tragedy, though, thanks in part to the quirky characters: Kimberly’s pregnant mother is a hypochondriac; her best friend, Seth, loves anagrams and plays the tuba; and her aunt is trying to persuade her to commit some white-collar crimes. Through it all, even though people with her condition have an average life expectancy of 16 years, Kimberly learns to be young and unafraid after years of taking on adult responsibilities.“I love stories that weave together pain, and hilarity and absurdity. And that, to me, is David and Jeanine, and their work and their sensibility,” said Stone, 52, who has been attached to the musical since 2019. “It’s exhilarating.”When the show premiered Off Broadway last winter at Atlantic Theater Company, Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, called it a “funny and moving new musical.” Led by the producer David Stone (no relation to the director), the show sold out its run, and a Broadway transfer was quickly announced. (As the producer of musicals like “Next to Normal” and “If/Then,” Stone is no stranger to an out-of-the-box concept.) Now “Kimberly Akimbo” is in previews, and scheduled to open on Nov. 10.Tesori, 60, and Lindsay-Abaire, 52, first worked together on “Shrek the Musical” in 2008, and for the past seven years, transforming Lindsay-Abaire’s 2001 play “Kimberly Akimbo” into a musical was their passion project. The focus and intimacy of that partnership, he said, made the musical “the easiest thing I’ve ever written.”He compares writing a musical to working on a puzzle. (He loves puzzles and word games; the show’s title is an anagram.) “It is like dumping a bunch of puzzle pieces onto the table,” he said. “It’s hard when you say, ‘Hey, 20 people, come on in and let’s do this puzzle together.’ But if it’s just the two of you — ‘I have this corner’; ‘I’m working on the edges; let’s get to the middle’ — then it comes into focus. And seldom does that happen with a musical.”Stone, Tesori and Lindsay-Abaire gathered to discuss their process on the first day of previews. These are edited excerpts from the discussion.Clark and Justin Cooley, who are reprising their roles on Broadway. “The two of them give each other really beautiful gifts,” the show’s director said of the actors.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDavid, what were the instincts that led you to write “Kimberly Akimbo” 20 years ago?DAVID LINDSAY-ABAIRE I was writing what I hoped would be a great part for an actress that I loved and adored: Marylouise Burke [who starred in the play Off Broadway in 2001]. I wrote a part for her because she and now Vicki [Victoria Clark] have such an amazing young spirit about them, even though they’re actresses of a certain age. And so I wanted to write an amazing part for a great actor. But I also wanted to explore mortality and what it means to truly live in the moment. What I probably didn’t know at the time was that I was also writing about my family in many ways, and things that I was afraid of and angry about.How do you mean?LINDSAY-ABAIRE Uh oh …JEANINE TESORI I don’t know if you can open that door.LINDSAY-ABAIRE Look, I love my family very much. And they messed me up just enough for this play to be what it is. [Tesori pats Lindsay-Abaire’s arm, remarking, “Wow.”] I don’t feel messed up by them. But I feel messed up just enough to be the writer and be the person that I am.TESORI That’s what makes you a storyteller. Healthy enough to write, damaged enough to want to write.The play didn’t have monologues for Kimberly, but it did have monologues for her parents. Was creating the musical a way to create more interiority for her?LINDSAY-ABAIRE During “Shrek,” I said to Jeanine, “I would love to write a musical the way that I write a play, where it would just be us figuring it out for as long as we needed to figure it out.” And then Jeanine said, “Well, how about one of your plays? I think ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ could be a musical. It has a really deep, complicated inner life. Those characters want to sing to me, their emotions are deep. And I like how funny it is.”By making it a musical, we had a way into the characters that the play did not have. We could crack open Kimberly’s heart, and let her express all of those feelings and emotions and fears and desires and longings, that are only subtext in the play.TESORI I feel it in my body when something sings, I can’t put it into words. And these characters, they reminded me of people I grew up with, they reminded me of people in my family — and not always people who are center stage, especially in a musical.Jessica, how did you direct Victoria Clark, who is 63, and Justin Cooley, who plays her boyfriend, Seth, who’s now 19? They come across as being the same age.STONE: It actually is thrilling because you have two people on opposite ends of the spectrum. The skill that Vicki brings to the process of exploration can’t be created in Justin. I watch him being elevated by the discipline and skill, and her surgical approach to figuring out Kim and mapping out Kim’s world and behavior. He starts to sort of mimic that work ethic and he starts to explore and basically copy that approach.His complete honesty, tabula rasa, complete truthful, youthful, wide-eyed innocence and sweetness — it’s really hard to create that once you’ve lived, you know, 35 more years. So the fact that she’s in his orbit, this beautiful, innocent, youthful presence also washes over her. So the two of them give each other really beautiful gifts.Speaking of teenagers, there’s a duality to the show. It’s about youthfulness, but it’s also about mortality. As experienced artists, how do you keep that youthful tone intact?TESORI It’s part of being of a certain age, and what we have all experienced at this age. I’m older than these two. We share the same sensibility of humor. But there’s also this sense, like, we’ve been through some [expletive]. And our friends have been through some [expletive], and we’ve lost people. And if you’re lucky, you’re able to bring both of those things to an audience so they can recognize it. Because I think sometimes because musicals have artifice, they can seem artificial. And they’re not. They are the greatest art form.STONE We’re all parents. And we all have been close observers to adolescents. That adds a little bit to the glaze of authenticity, and a little understanding of the behavior, needs and pitfalls.LINDSAY-ABAIRE The first time in, I was really accessing my teenage years and stuff about my parents and my family, but really homing in on the Seth character who is very close to me in very many ways. I’m now the father of teenage boys, and I just had access to the parents in a way that I didn’t have when I wrote it. I understand much more acutely the fear of losing a child. The whole dynamics between parents and teenagers that I was sort of making up 20 years ago, now I know it deeply and personally. And I also got the chance to put all of my high school friends up onstage. Those four kids in the show choir were not in the play.“If you can have a gaggle of teenagers skipping out of the show, and then this grumpy old man with tears in his eyes — that’s victory,” said Lindsay-Abaire, right.Victor Llorente for The New York TimesDo you imagine this as the kind of show that parents can take their teens to?STONE ​​My kids, 13 and 15, were here, and they loved it. Because I’m so invested in the parent side of the story, and in the mortality side of the story, and in the how-do-you-choose-to-live-your-remaining-days-on-this-planet side of the story, I forget about the delight, the tremendous luxury of hope and time, that teens have. And that enables so much in terms of imagination and promise. [My sons] think it’s hilarious. They love Deborah [Kimberly’s aunt, played by Bonnie Milligan], because they love a rule breaker. They also thought it was really moving. They were really intrigued by the relationship between Kim and Seth, not because it’s a traditional love story. But they really responded to that deep friendship.LINDSAY-ABAIRE Nothing has made me happier than seeing gaggles of teenagers really love the show. But at the same time, at the end of the Atlantic run, a grumpy old man was walking up the aisle and he looked at me and I thought he’s going to criticize the piece. And he said, “I just want you to know that I’m going to go out and live life more fully tomorrow.” My eyes welled up and then he was gone into the night. If you can have a gaggle of teenagers skipping out of the show, and then this grumpy old man with tears in his eyes — that’s victory.In the musical, Kimberly’s aunt sings an upbeat number about how to commit mail fraud. Jeanine, how did you write a catchy song about white collar crime?TESORI [laughs] It’s exposition, which is generally not great for a song. But then I thought, “Oh, if we make it really sort of furtive, and it’s got a little bit of a muted guitar thing, and it’s sort of like Peggy Lee, but maybe on a very, very off day …” It’s having it be fun, so that she can convince the teens to be part of it.LINDSAY-ABAIRE It’s a teaching song. We were talking about “The Rain in Spain” [from “My Fair Lady”], but it’s about check washing. It’s just messed up enough. More

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    Jules Bass, Co-Producer of TV Holiday Staples, Is Dead at 87

    The animation company he ran with Arthur Rankin Jr. gave the world “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman” and much more.Jules Bass, who created an animation empire with his business partner, Arthur Rankin Jr., that produced perennial Christmastime television favorites like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman,” died on Tuesday in Rye, N.Y. He was 87.His death, at an assisted living facility, was confirmed by Jennifer Ruff, whose mother was Mr. Bass’s first wife.The Rankin/Bass studio was a major force in animated programming, mostly on television, from the early 1960s to the late ’80s. Some of its TV shows and movies used traditional hand-drawn cel animation, but it carved out a separate specialty in the stop-motion puppet animation familiar to viewers since “Gumby” in the 1950s.Rankin/Bass’s stop-motion specials included “Rudolph” (1964), featuring the voice of the folk singer Burl Ives as Sam the Snowman;“Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” (1970), with Fred Astaire as the narrator and Mickey Rooney as the voice of Kris Kringle; and “Jack Frost” (1979), with Robert Morse voicing the title role.“Frosty” (1969), narrated by Jimmy Durante, used traditional animation.To create the stop-motion effect, animators in Japan painstakingly shot thousands of pictures of the tiniest movements and gestures of inches-tall puppets. When run at 24 frames a second, the images generated a whimsical sort of herky-jerky animation that became the Rankin/Bass signature.“When I saw their cartoons, they left a great impression on me because they had dimensionality versus drawn animation,” said Tom Gasek, a professor in the school of film and animation at the Rochester Institute of Technology who was inspired by Rankin/Bass’s work to become a stop-motion animator. “They were not high quality by any means, but they were charming and their designs were very smart.”Mr. Bass and Mr. Rankin were often credited as the directors of their work and offered input on scripts and storyboards. But they played different roles at the company, said Rick Goldschmidt, the studio’s official historian.Mr. Bass composed much of the music. He hired and worked closely with the musical supervisor, Maury Laws, and ran the company’s business in Manhattan while Mr. Rankin was in Japan supervising the animation.“Where Jules is really the star of Rankin/Bass is as a songwriter and his partnership with Maury,” Mr. Goldschmidt said in a phone interview.Mr. Rankin, who was the studio’s chief executive, also sold the shows to TV networks and made sure they were delivered on time.“After a while, we were never seen together — I’d be doing production in Tokyo and he’d be recording a soundtrack in New York,” Mr. Rankin said in an interview in 2003 with the Museum of Television and Radio, now the Paley Center for Media. “If we were together, one of us wasn’t necessary.”Mr. Bass was rarely quoted publicly, and little is known about his private life. But the two partners spoke during a joint interview with The New York Times in 1982 when their animated theatrical feature, “The Last Unicorn,” was released.When they were asked who did most of the directing — the movie credits both of them — they initially said they did it together.“Anything he can do, I can do better,” Mr. Rankin said.Mr. Bass countered: “He never worked a day on the film. I did everything.”Peter S. Beagle, who wrote the screenplay for “The Last Unicorn” and the novel it was based on, recalled in a phone interview that his dealings with Mr. Bass “were very professional.” But, he added, “he was very private, and I never had a true sense of what was going on deepest in his head.”He added, “I’m grateful that the film came out pretty much as I wrote it.”Arthur Rankin Jr., left, and Mr. Bass in 1965. Both men were credited as producers and directors of their TV specials, but Mr. Bass was more involved with the music and Mr. Rankin with the animation.Miser Bros. Press/Rick Goldschmidt ArchivesJulius Bass was born in Philadelphia on Sept. 16, 1935. His father, Max, was a wholesale beer salesman, and his mother, Bernice (Palat) Bass, was a homemaker.He attended New York University, where he studied marketing from 1952 to 1954, but he did not graduate. He was hired by Gardner Advertising in Manhattan, where he met Mr. Rankin, who was making TV commercials under the banner of his company, Videocraft International.Mr. Bass joined Videocraft in the mid-1950s, and the two men produced commercials, occasionally using animation, for agencies that represented clients including General Electric and the A.&P. supermarket chain. They wearied of commercial production and shifted to animation in 1960 with a TV series, “The New Adventures of Pinocchio,” which used the stop-motion technique Mr. Bass had discovered in Japan.The company eventually changed its name to Rankin/Bass, and its work toggled between stop-motion and traditional cel animation.Although Rankin/Bass was best known for its Christmas programs, it also made TV movies like “The Ballad of Smokey the Bear” (1966), which was narrated by James Cagney,; “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” (1971); and “The Hobbit” (1977), which earned a Peabody Award. They also produced animated TV series like “King Kong” (1966), “The Reluctant Dragon & Mr. Toad Show” (1970), the “Jackson 5ive” (1971),“TigerSharks” (1985) and “Thundercats” (1987).Mr. Bass and Mr. Rankin ended their partnership in the late 1980s after their company was acquired by Lorimar-Telepictures, which was subsequently bought by Warner Communications, which is now Warner Bros. Discovery. Mr. Rankin died in 2014.Mr. Bass later wrote three children’s books. “Herb the Vegetarian Dragon” and “Cooking With Herb the Vegetarian Dragon,” illustrated by Debbie Harter, were both published in 1999. “The Mythomaniacs” (2013), with illustrations by Lawrence Christmas, is about a teenage magician who sends a group of readers of his father’s fairy tales into the books as characters.He also wrote an adult novel, “Headhunters” (2001), about four women from New Jersey who go to Monte Carlo and pretend to be among the world’s wealthiest women. It was adapted into a 2011 film, “Monte Carlo,” starring Selena Gomez.Mr. Bass leaves no immediate survivors. His daughter, Jean Nicole Bass, died this year. His marriages to Renee Fisherman and Sylvia Bass ended in divorce.The power of two of Rankin/Bass’s best-known productions has reverberated for decades since they were released: Both “Rudolph” and “Frosty” remain highly rated cornerstones of CBS’s pre-Christmas programming.In 2014, CBS promoted “Rudolph” on its 50th anniversary with ads that used stop motion to show the renowned reindeer and Sam the Snowman walking around the network’s backlot, meeting the stars of some of its other shows, including Mayim Bialik of “The Big Bang Theory” and Michael Weatherly of “NCIS.”“They’re the fabric of our Christmas hearth, the wood in the Christmas fire,” George Schweitzer, CBS’s former president of marketing, said in a phone interview. “You knew Christmas was coming when Rudolph and Frosty showed up on CBS.” More