Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    Hulu’s ‘The Bear’ Fuels Demand for Chicago’s Italian Beef Sandwich

    The FX series has fueled a spike in sales of the sandwich at Chicago-specialty restaurants across the country.Last month, Dan Michaels, an owner of Gino’s East of Chicago in Los Angeles, watched as orders for Italian beef — the classic Chicago sandwich of thinly sliced roast beef and tangy giardiniera piled on a roll — suddenly soared to 300 a day, from 150 a day in June.“The Bear” had struck again.The cross-talking, anxiety-inducing series from FX about a struggling Chicago beef sandwich shop and its harried kitchen brigade has drawn acclaim from food media and restaurant veterans, propelled a slew of “Yes, Chef!” memes gushing over the lead actor, Jeremy Allen White, and energized a collective lust for sweaty line cooks.The show has also spurred instant demand for the delectably sloppy Italian beef sandwiches at the center of the plot’s chaos. Search interest on Google, according to Google Trends, nearly doubled after the show was released on Hulu on June 23, and Chicago-style restaurants across the country are feeling the effects in person.From left, Jeremy Allen White, Lionel Boyce and Ebon Moss-Bachrach convening in a walk-in refrigerator on “The Bear.”FX, via Associated PressMike Klaersch, the owner of the Pizza Man, a mom-and-pop Chicago joint outside Kansas City, Kan., noticed customers piling in for the sandwiches. The restaurant, he said, sold five to six times as many as it did in June.Jarret Kerr, an owner of Dog Day Afternoon, a Chicago Italian beef and hot dog restaurant in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, said he had seen at least a 50 percent increase in orders of hot Italian beef sandwiches — at $15, the most expensive item on the menu — since the show debuted. The cramped shop used to sell up to a dozen a day; the staff is now slinging 30 or more a day and selling out daily.“It’s been a godsend,” Mr. Kerr said. “Now every day we say, well, thank you to ‘The Bear,’ thank you to ‘The Bear.’”The shop was name-checked last month on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” when Mr. Meyers and the actor Mr. White, who stars as Carmy in the series, took bites of its Italian beef sandwich. (A “Late Night” intern snagged the last two sandwiches before the shop sold out for the day, Mr. Kerr said.)Goldbelly, an e-commerce company that delivers specialties like lobster rolls and gumbo from restaurants around the country, has seen a 30 percent increase in sales of Italian beef sandwiches since “The Bear” premiered, a spokeswoman for the company said. (That number could soon rise with the recent addition of the Chicago staple Al’s Beef to the site.)According to Chicagoans, a true Italian beef relies on a consistent, harmonious formula of roast beef and hot giardiniera, all atop — this is important — a Turano Baking Company French roll. Roasted peppers, for a touch of sweetness, are optional. The sandwich is then “dipped, dunked or baptized” in beef juices according to jus preference, said Henry Tibensky, a native Chicagoan and the founder and chef of Hank’s Juicy Beef, a roving Chicago hot dog and sandwich pop-up in New York City.The gloriously messy sandwich as served at Al’s Beef in Chicago.Anjali Pinto for The New York TimesAmjad Haj, an owner of two Al’s Beef locations in Chicago, hasn’t seen an increase in business, but his customers are talking about the show. “One thing I’ve heard a couple of times though is they don’t think the accent is right,” Mr. Haj said. (Staff members at three other Chicago-area restaurants we contacted hadn’t heard of “The Bear” at all.)Not even the recent heat wave that hit much of the country could slow demand. Italian beef sandwich orders have doubled over the last two weeks at Emmett’s, a Chicago-cuisine restaurant in Manhattan, said the owner, Emmett Burke.At Mr. Beef On Orleans in Chicago, where exterior scenes for “The Bear” were shot, business is booming. Joseph Zucchero, an owner who opened the shop in 1979, said he went from selling 250 to 300 Italian beefs per day pre-“Bear” to 800 daily in early July.“The week after it aired, all of a sudden, we were out of bread,” Mr. Zucchero said. Some days he keeps the shop open three to four hours past closing time to accommodate the line of customers.As for the show? “I haven’t seen it yet,” he said as a phone started to ring in the background. “I’m too busy. I’m waiting for all of the hullabaloo to calm down.”Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

  • 100 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    Stephen Colbert Taunts Trump for Bad Bathroom Behavior

    “To be fair, it’s unclear if those are official White House documents or his toilet’s suicide note,” Colbert said.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.Name DropperStephen Colbert couldn’t resist razzing Donald Trump on Monday night after photos were released that were said to show ripped up notes in the former president’s toilet.“Not the first time the former president tried to flush something embarrassing. One time, staffers went in there and found Eric,” Colbert joked, referring to the former president’s son.“Of course, when the story broke, the ex-president denied it. So, that’s it. There’s no way to know the truth — until this weekend, when the plot went from one-ply to two, because Haberman revealed these photos from a White House source, showing some torn-up toilet memos. To be fair, it is unclear if those are official White House documents or his toilet’s suicide note.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, referring to Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter“He even wrote the name ‘Stefanik,’ as in Elise Stefanik, one of the ex-president’s biggest G.O.P. defenders in Congress. If you’re in the MAGA world, that’s huge. Congrats, Elise, heard the president dropped your name.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Wow, even the toilets are writing tell-alls.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Biden’s Back — Again Edition)“Good news, President Biden is now Covid-free! Happy to hear that. He’s back on his feet and as healthy as a 175-year-old horse.” — ROB MCELHENNEY, guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“This was Biden’s second bout with the virus. You know, these rebound Covid cases are quite rare. They say the odds of Joe Biden getting reinfected were almost as low as the odds that he gets re-elected.” — ROB MCELHENNEY“And 18 days is a long time in quarantine, but I’m sure he’ll get right back into the swing of things, you know, because, yeah, being president is a lot like, you know, riding a bike — oh, Joe, no, don’t do it! Don’t do it!” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, Biden had a great weekend. He’s feeling so good, last night he looked at his bottle of Cialis like, ‘Not tonight, pal. I got this.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe Canadian singer-songwriter Lauren Spencer-Smith made her U.S. television debut on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightKate McKinnon will pop by Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutAbbi Jacobson plays a talented, anxious catcher who becomes her team’s leader.Amazon StudiosAbbi Jacobson cocreated and stars in the new Amazon television adaptation of the popular 1992 film, “A League of Their Own.” More

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 12 Recap: Hit the Road

    Kim would like to make a confession, Gene has a new problem, and Jeff has car trouble.Season 6, Episode 12: ‘Waterworks’After years of blending in and keeping low in Omaha, Gene Takavic, a.k.a. Saul Goodman, is about to lam it. In the closing moments of this episode, he is outed for good by a terrified but determined Marion, who has discovered the truth about her overly helpful pal. All it took was a computer, Ask Jeeves and a few key words: “Con man” and “Albuquerque.”We still don’t know why Gene changed from a skittish, no-profile schmo into a risk-addled home invader. One assumed that there were clues to be gleaned from the conversation he had with Kim in the previous episode, but in this one, we hear that conversation and nothing about it says, “This guy needs a lot of cash, stat.” It might be that swindlers need to swindle, that Jimmy/Saul isn’t alive unless he is ripping someone off and skirting the law. Perhaps this isn’t a story about a man who needs money. It’s a story about a man who can’t change.If so, it sets up a stark distinction between Jimmy/Saul and Kim. We find her in Titusville, Fla., living an utterly pedestrian life designing brochures for a sprinkler wholesaler. She seems reasonably happy with her hunky boyfriend and their suburban, backyard-barbeque life. The justice-seeking lawyer in her has been quashed, and we get only the briefest peek at her former self when Kim flies to Albuquerque and visits the courthouse, where she looks enviously at a public defender. In a glance, she sees the life she has abandoned, the calling that drew her with such force that she hatched a very nasty scheme — to frame Howard Hamlin as a drug addict — in order to fund it.Kim has returned to New Mexico to right a wrong. She confesses everything in an affidavit, which she presents both to prosecutors and to Cheryl, Howard’s widow. It’s all there. Every petty twist in the plot that buried Howard, including his murder at hands of Lalo Salamanca. This drastic act happens right after that call from Jimmy/Saul in the previous episode.“I’m still getting away with it,” Jimmy/Saul says.“You should turn yourself in,” Kim replies, after a painful silence.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel is ending this year.A Refresher: Need to catch up? Here’s where things left off after the first seven episodes of the show’s final season, which aired this spring.Bob Odenkirk: After receiving a fifth Emmy nomination in July, the star discussed bringing some measure of self-awareness to the character of Saul for his final bow.Stealing the Show: Kim Wexler’s long slide toward perdition has become arguably the narrative keystone of the series, thanks to Rhea Seehorn’s performance.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.“Why don’t you turn yourself in, seeing as you’re the one with the guilty conscience,” Jimmy/Saul says. “What is stopping you?”He then lists the people, all dead, who could possibly help implicate Kim. It’s a reminder that she could tell the authorities the whole truth, and without any bodies and any witnesses, it might not matter.It’s a point that Kim herself makes when Cheryl asks whether this conscience-cleansing affidavit comes with any authentic legal peril. The truth is that Kim can keep getting away with it, too, even if she wants to be punished. Maybe that’s why she cries during the ride on the rental car bus. The unburdened life is unavailable to her. It’s a predicament worthy of Dostoyevsky, and it’s an especially gruesome fate given that she was the one who conceived and pushed for the scheme against Howard. There was a time — it started at the end of Season 5, to be precise — when Kim was the more wicked of this duo.Not that Kim has become a saint. Note that she tells Cheryl one whopper — that Jimmy might be dead. (To be lawyerly and specific about it, Kim says that there are no living witnesses to events described in the affidavit, other than her ex-husband, “assuming he’s still alive.”) She knows he’s alive. She just spoke to him. Kim was always the better liar in this couple, and that is still true.But with her job and boyfriend in Florida, Kim was taking a stab at a dull and law-abiding life. At first, it seemed hard to fathom that she had managed to become an office worker whose life revolved around writing vivid descriptions of plastic tubing. It seems a long way from the valiant efforts she made on behalf of indigent clients. Remember though, that the crusading incarnation of Kim was relatively new. She worked for years as an associate at a law firm, and then she burrowed deep into the intricacies of banking regulations as counsel to Mesa Verde, a local bank with regional dreams. She’s done the office drudgery thing before.Whether she can keep her quotidian existence is a question that is no longer hers alone to answer. Her affidavit incriminates Jimmy, too, and at minimum, he is going to need to run from the law. If he is caught, the show could end with an episode that pits Kim against Jimmy, back in Albuquerque, perhaps in a trial that garners national attention. (“Consigliere of Dead Meth Baron Implicated by Ex-Wife!”)Kim would be the only witness who could send Jimmy away. And it’s getting easier to root for some jail time for this guy, is it not? In the last few episodes the writers have put their collective and heavy thumbs on the scale by turning Saul/Gene into a monster. In this week’ episode, he appeared to be on the verge of strangling Marion with a cord, and earlier he seemed every bit as ready to cold-cock a man with the urn containing the ashes of his dog.This is a nervy turn of events. The show has ditched the idea that this is a narrative about love. The show will culminate, it seems, by posing questions about fairness and justice and maybe mercy. Will Cheryl forgive Kim or sue her? Will Kim testify against Jimmy or spare him?What ending does Saul Goodman deserve?Odds and EndsIt’s great to see Jesse Pinkman return for yet another scene, one that occurs before he goes to speak to Saul about springing his friend Badger out of jail, an event from the “Breaking Bad” timeline. His dialogue sounds utterly organic. (“It’s crazy, like bananas, all this rain. I thought we were, like, in a desert, you know?”)But this feels a bit like stunt casting because it’s hard to see how his presence moves the story forward. The scene ends with Kim saying that Saul was a good lawyer back when she knew him, underscoring the notion that the man she married no longer exists. That’s a point that could have been made without Jesse, and one that is pretty obvious during the signing of the divorce papers, moments earlier, when Saul feigns indifference as they muddle through the paperwork. It would have been great to learn something about Saul we could not have known unless Jesse showed up. Or even something new about Jesse.Fun fact: Kim represented Combo after he stole a creche.Wait, another scene of Kim brushing her teeth?Jeff’s freak out and car wreck seem implausible, even for Jeff.Saul/Gene uses the name Viktor St. Clair as a pseudonym when he calls Kim, which she appears to recognize immediately. Sound familiar? It’s the name he used (“Viktor, with a K”) when he and Kim ran their first con together, on the foul-mouthed stockbroker Ken, back in the Season 2 premiere (with help from a spiky-topped bottle of Zafiro Añejo).We learn during that phone conversation that Kim did not take the Sandpiper Crossing settlement money. Her conscience has been plaguing her for a while.Perhaps the best part of this episode is the way that its writer and director, Vince Gilligan, captured office life with such uncanny verisimilitude. The birthday cakes, the Miracle Whip lunch talk, the ritualized passing of hole punchers from one employee to another — it’s all so dead on. Offices like that of Palm Coast Sprinklers have been a part of television for a long time, but this might be the most accurate depiction of it Your Faithful Recapper has ever seen.The next episode is the last. The end of an era! Feel free to make predictions in the comments section. More

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Theater

    ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Review: An Adaptation That Needs Tailoring

    The new Elton John-Shaina Taub musical, based on the popular film about a fashion-world ingénue and her demanding boss, isn’t yet ready-to-wear.CHICAGO — A movie-to-musical that wants to have its cake and eat it, too, and still fit into a sample size, “The Devil Wears Prada,” opened at the James M. Nederlander Theater here on Sunday. With music by the rock god Elton John and lyrics by the Off-Broadway sweetheart Shaina Taub (“Suffs”), it had seemed poised to set a trend or two.Though the show takes place at a fashion magazine, its creative team doesn’t seem to have agreed on a style. Is this a sincere story of a young woman’s education — sentimental, professional, sartorial — or a Fashion Week party? An inquiry into toxic workplace culture or an excuse to put an Eiffel Tower (technically, two Eiffel Towers) onstage? This is a show that has tried on everything in its closet. Nothing fits.Adapted from the 2006 film, itself adapted from Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 roman à clef of her year at Condé Nast, it follows Andy Sachs (Taylor Iman Jones), a recent journalism graduate. Andy has big dreams. The Big Apple quashes them quickly in “I Mean Business,” the show’s efficient opener. After six months of rejections, she somehow lands a coveted job at Runway — a fictional stand-in for Vogue — as the second assistant to its imperious editrix, Miranda Priestly (Beth Leavel.)Andy doesn’t care about fashion. She has the cable-knit tights to prove it. But she needs a job to pay the rent. (Yes, the musical assumes that an entry-level media gig guarantees financial security. How dear.) So she makes what she perceives as the first of many Faustian bargains — to put her dreams on hold and stick it out for a year.“My voice can wait,” she tells Miranda. I mean, Joan Didion got her start at Vogue. But sure.The trouble is, Andy isn’t very good at her job. Certainly she lacks the maniacal perfectionism and bonkers wardrobe of Emily Charlton, the venomous first assistant (Megan Masako Haley, wasted until the second act). For help, she turns to the magazine’s creative director, Nigel Owens (Javier Muñoz), who gives her the makeover she so desperately needs, in “Dress Your Way Up,” a power ballad inspired by the Met’s costume collection and the coffee mug platitude that you should dress for the job you want.But Andy remains ambivalent about her work. And is a hot pink romper and thigh-high boots really anyone’s idea of office wear? (The costumes, which range from the flamboyant — the chorus — to the unpersuasive and oddly wrinkled — the principals — are by Arianne Phillips.) The musical is ambivalent, too. The film, with its sleeker wardrobe and more substantial visual pleasures, seemed grudgingly admiring of the fashion industry, as commerce, as art. The show, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, a serious-minded artist I would not have associated with glitter or caprice, can’t make up its mind.The songs unfold pleasantly enough, with flashes of glam and morsels of wit, but they tend to feel last-season. The choreography, by James Alsop, defers to Broadway vernacular, with glimmers of ballroom. Of course there is voguing. Though Kate Wetherhead’s book makes a few updates — there’s a reference to collagen powder — it doesn’t take a point of view. And in a show with a stated aversion to starches, the jokes are deeply corny.“What should I do?” Andy wails as Miranda approaches.“Find a better exfoliant, for starters,” Nigel says.Javier Muñoz, center, as the creative director of Runway magazine, which is overseen by the imperious editor Miranda Priestly, played by Beth Leavel.Joan MarcusAt times, I wondered what a writer who takes bigger, more trenchant comic swings — Bess Wohl, say, Jocelyn Bioh, Halley Feiffer — might have done with this material. Would a score that acknowledged the last 40 years of popular music have made a difference? This version takes Jones, a charismatic actress with a lithe, flexible voice, and gives her little to do except stress and dither. (She glows, by the way, no exfoliant needed.) And though magazines like Vogue have finally admitted a lack of diversity, the musical never acknowledges that everyone mistreated by Miranda, who is white, is a person of color.“The Devil Wears Prada” wants to impart a vision of luxury and style — which explains the makeover scene, the gala scene, the Paris fashion week scene. Christine Jones and Brett Banakis, the set and media designers, have a lot of fun with Paris. But Andy, a woman with no professional bylines, seems to feel that fashion is somehow beneath her. Even when she comes to appreciate couture on a personal level (“Who’s She?”), she never recognizes it as substantive, rejecting the chance to write about it. It remains frivolous, unserious, girl stuff, which gives the musical, despite the presence of so many women on the creative team, a shade of antifeminism.None of the female characters in the show support one another until nearly the finale. Andy’s two roommates (Christiana Cole and Tiffany Mann) are sketched so thinly I never caught their names. They still make time to judge her. As looks go, it’s not great.Another nervous day at Runway: Jones, left, Muñoz and Leavel, with members of the ensemble.Joan MarcusWhich brings us, of course, to the Miranda of it all. In the film, Meryl Streep played Miranda with sleek silver hair and a voice like liquid nitrogen — an ice queen to sink the Titanic. But Leavel is an actress of humor and warmth with a gift, demonstrated in “The Drowsy Chaperone” and “The Prom,” for arch self-parody. Miranda should have her underlings shaking in their Louboutin boots. Here, everyone stands pretty tall.Has Wetherhead’s book melted Miranda or does Leavel lack the necessary frost? Both, really. The musical gifts her a late confessional, “Stay On Top.” Because if you have a voice like Leavel’s, of course you should showcase it. But Miranda isn’t built for self-reflection. And “Stay On Top” doesn’t offer much anyway.Curiously, the character the musical represents most fully isn’t uncertain Andy or meanie Miranda, but cucumber-cool Nigel. In addition to “Dress Your Way Up,” the musical’s best number, he also delivers the second act’s “Seen,” a poignant song about how fashion magazines succored him as a gay adolescent. Muñoz, a consummate performer, elevates both.The musical’s first act closes with its title song, a suggestion that the fashion world is a kind of inferno. “Hell is a runway,” the chorus sings (with a sound mix so muddy that I had to look up the lyrics later), “where the devil wears Prada.” But nothing in the show confirms this. The worst anguish Andy suffers? Her boss calls too often. “The Devil Wears Prada” isn’t as sumptuous as it should be or as bitingly incisive. If it wants a life beyond Chicago, it could use some alterations.The Devil Wears PradaThrough Aug. 21 at the James M. Nederlander Theater, Chicago; devilwearspradamusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. More

  • 113 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Princess’ and ‘Password’

    HBO airs a new documentary on the life and death of Princess Diana. And NBC brings back a game show.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, Aug. 8 — 14. Details and times are subject to change.MondayMOULIN ROUGE (2001) 5:49 p.m. on Starz. Over twenty years before Baz Luhrmann was focused on “Elvis,” he directed this whimsical, pop-music filled love story. Set in Paris in 1899 Christian (Ewan McGregor), a writer, meets Satine (Nicole Kidman), a cabaret dancer, at Moulin Rouge and tries to impress her in order to be able to perform his play at the now-iconic venue in the outskirts of Montmartre. They end up falling in love despite the relationship Satine is faking with a Duke (Richard Roxburgh) who is helping fund the club. “‘Moulin Rouge’ will be accused of having no heart,” Elvis Mitchell wrote in his review for The New York Times. “But the truth is just the opposite. The movie has so much heart that the poor overworked organ explodes in every scene.”TuesdayFrom left: a contestant, Jimmy Fallon and Keke Palmer in “Password.”Jordan Althaus/NBCPASSWORD 10 p.m. on NBC. In 1961, CBS aired its first episode of this game show. After a 14-year run, the show ended and instead became an occasional segment on Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show.” This Tuesday, the show is coming back with Fallon as an executive producer and Keke Palmer as the host. Each episode will feature Fallon teaming up with a celebrity guest (to name a few: Chelsea Handler, Heidi Klum and Martin Short), and they will be playing against two contestants to guess a secret password using one-word codes. The first episode of the show will honor Betty White, who originally played the game on the show in 1961 — which is also where she met her husband, Allen Ludden, who hosted the show.HARD KNOCKS: THE DETROIT LIONS 10 p.m. on HBO. With a new team and new season, football fans are getting another inside look into what goes on at training camp — this season follows the Detroit Lions. Each season of this long-running show follows a different NFL team’s players and coaches in their personal and professional lives. This year, cameras followed the Lions at their training camp in Allen Park, Mi. Later this fall, there will be another new season featuring the Arizona Cardinals.WednesdayAlan Tudyk in “Resident Alien.”SYFYRESIDENT ALIEN 10 p.m. on SYFY. After a midseason break, this show is back on Wednesday to tie up loose ends from the first half of the second season. In the series, which is based on a comic book of the same name, Alan Tudyk plays Harry Vanderspeigle, an alien who was dropped to earth on a mission to destroy all life but cannot do that until he fixes his spaceship. In the meantime, he pretends to be a small town doctor. The show has already been renewed for a third season.ThursdayBUMP 8 p.m. on the CW. Coming all the way from Australia, this show about an unexpected teen pregnancy is airing in the U.S. for the first time this week. The series begins when a 17-year-old girl named Olympia (Nathalie Morris) is rushed to the hospital for intense cramps and finds out she is actually in labor. She then has to reassess her ten-year plan when she realizes the baby’s father is not her boyfriend. The original run on Stan in Australia finished after two seasons.FridayCHILDREN OF THE UNDERGROUND 8 p.m. on FX. In the late 1980s into the early 1990s, Faye Yager was creating a secret network of women and children who she was helping protect from alleged abuse at the hands of their husbands or fathers when the criminal justice system did not step in. In 1992, she went to trial herself, for kidnapping and emotional cruelty of the children she was claiming to help. Though she was acquitted of all charges, public opinion has not decided whether she was hurting or helping the families she worked with. This original documentary is diving deep into who Yager was and what she was trying to accomplish in this five-part original series.SaturdayTHE PRINCESS (2022) 8 p.m. on HBO. Aug. 31 will mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Though there has been no shortage of details surrounding her untimely death in the years that followed, this documentary uses archival interviews and footage to highlight key moments in the princess’s public life and lay out the details as if they were happening in real time. The film focuses on the public adoration of the princess as well as the intense media scrutiny she faced.SundayAaron Paul in “Westworld.”John Johnson/HBOWESTWORLD 9 p.m. on HBO. This show, which was first set in a futuristic park meant for wealthy people looking for a vacation, is wrapping up its fourth season this week. The show first premiered in 2016, and viewers experienced a seven-year time jump in the show between season three and the current season. This season consisted of eight episodes, and there is no word from HBO yet about whether it will be renewed.WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? 7 p.m. on NBC. It turns out that Zachary Quinto, who played Commander Spock in “Star Trek Beyond,” wasn’t the first person in his family to say the iconic greeting “live long and prosper” — his great-grandfather, P.J. McArdle, wrote a letter to the editor in a newspaper published in 1899 that ends with the phrase: “May it live long and prosper.” This is just one of the things that Quinto finds out about his history on this show, executive produced by Ancestry, which is finishing up its eighth season this week. This season comprised six episodes featuring Billy Porter, Nick Offerman, Allison Janney, Zachary Levi and Bradley Whitford.GRANTCHESTER 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The seventh season of this series is set in the summer of 1959. There are lots of murders happening in the city of Grantchester, which gives the detective inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green) and his friend, the Reverend Will Davenport (Tom Brittney) a lot of crime solving to do. The show, which originally aired on ITV in Britain, has not yet confirmed whether there will be an eighth season. More

  • 63 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    Greetings From My Shameless Summer

    Wear the crop top. Have the salad — and the fries, too.I live for moments when I feel encyclopedic. Yesterday, at a backyard party, people asked who sang the song that was playing and I screamed out “Keyshia Cole” with a little too much enthusiasm. I was right, and I lit up with such delight that I felt stupid.I always think I’m annoying people, when in reality people aren’t thinking about me at all. Liberating. Anyway, I love being right. It’s fun to be right, and people who act like it’s so Zen and cool and humbling to be wrong are … wrong! Get over yourself! Humility is so 2019; this year is all about shameless bragging.I want to see your vacation pics. I want to see your degree. I want to see your completed pile of beautiful, fragrant folded laundry. I want to see you win.Enough misery. Wear the crop top, flaunt the promotion, show me that salad you made and the french fries you ate when the salad wasn’t enough. As for me, I watched every single season of “Summer House” in less than a month. After I typed that sentence, I went to calculate how many minutes of TV that added up to. I closed the calculator within seconds of opening it because some mysteries are best left unsolved.Trying to be deep is exhausting. I’m definitely getting dumber. Why am I an expert in Mormon swinger TikTok drama? Meanwhile, I don’t know which plants are native to my area. Related to this uptick in Mormon swinger knowledge: I blew through my TikTok limit today (again!). So, once again, it’s time to do my self-care theater of deleting whatever social media app I’m allowing to ruin my life before getting bored again and redownloading it after three hours.“If you’re bored, you’re boring” — honey, prepare the starboard side, because that ship has sailed! I’m boring! And depressed, and anxious, and exhausted, and unwilling to watch a feature film unless I think it’s going to be bad. Where’s that in the D.S.M.? Don’t tell me.A friend recently told me that there aren’t any lightning bugs in Seattle. I couldn’t believe it. It was the same betrayal I felt when I found out that the restaurants in my hometown weren’t all mega-popular national chains. It kills me that I won’t get to see everything you love, no matter how hard I try, no matter who you are. I don’t care if you see the same colors I see — the colors aren’t important to me — but I need you to see a bug’s butt turn on and off as the sun slips away behind the trees of my yard back in Ohio.Maybe my friend was wrong. Maybe she wasn’t paying attention to the bugs all around her all those years. Maybe she was always surrounded by lightning and had no idea. Doubtful.Now I’m back in New York. I was gone for so long, and now you can use your phone to get on the subway. What the hell? Do we like that, or does it suck? Please don’t tell me; I don’t think I actually care. Is that bad? I just don’t feel like I can care about everything anymore. There were a couple years when I cared about everything, and all it got me was an ulcer.I never know what button to press at the gas station. I’m pretty sure I chose diesel for the first few months of driving because I was too scared to ask. Oops! Thankfully I totaled that car, so no one will ever know what I did to its internal organs.Usually, I realize I was in the right place at the right time shortly after I’ve left. The ache creeps in and I want to turn around and go right back to where we just were. I talk myself out of it — everyone’s already on the way home. Too inconvenient. And how humiliating, to be the only one craning my neck toward something that ended. It probably meant more to me than it did to you. But what if you’re looking, too? Is that something that happens only in movies, or should I be on the lookout for longing glances more often?Sometimes I say I have no goals, and I mean it. Is that pathetic or lovely? A little of both, I think. I believe that I can do everything and nothing. I believe I will disappear as quickly as I came, that I can hate olives one day and love them the next, that I’ll keep finding new things to love about myself and others. I believe that one day I’ll turn around to look behind me and you’ll be looking, too. We’ll meet right back at the middle and sit back down in seats so freshly vacated that they’re still warm. There’s something about a warm chair that’s disgusting, unless the heat comes from someone you know and love. Isn’t that funny? Heat from a butt is still heat from a butt, no matter which butt it came from. I digress.I hope you get to see lightning bugs at least once in your life. Their light shines on as quickly as it shuts off until, before you know it, the summer is over and the bugs are dead and you and I are still here, watching the world get bigger and smaller and louder and more cluttered. I’ll outlive millions of lightning bugs, but my butt will never be a light source. We’ve all got our special little things that no one else can claim. Show me yours and I’ll show you mine, pulsing gently in tandem as the pink summer sun climbs back up across the horizon.Episode is a weekly column exploring a moment in a writer’s life. Mitra Jouhari has written for “Big Mouth,” “High Maintenance” and other television shows. She is a co-creator and star of the comedy series “Three Busy Debras.” More

  • 150 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    Clu Gulager, ‘The Tall Man’ and ‘The Virginian’ Actor, Dies at 93

    On TV, he played Billy the Kid on the “The Tall Man” and was seen on the long-running “The Virginian.” His movies ranged from “The Killers” to “The Last Picture Show.” Clu Gulager, a rugged character actor who appeared in critically acclaimed films like “The Last Picture Show” as well as low-budget horror movies, and who memorably portrayed gunslingers on two television westerns, died on Friday at his son John’s home in Los Angeles. He was 93.John Gulager confirmed the death. He said his father’s health had been in decline since he suffered a back injury several years ago.Mr. Gulager’s rough-hewed good looks and Southwestern upbringing made him a natural for the westerns that proliferated on television in the 1950s and ’60s. He was seen regularly on “Wagon Train,” “Bonanza,” “Have Gun — Will Travel” and other shows.An appearance as the hit man Mad Dog Coll on “The Untouchables” in 1959 persuaded the writer and producer Sam Peeples to cast Mr. Gulager as the legendary outlaw Billy the Kid on “The Tall Man,” a television series he was planning about Billy’s friendship with Sheriff Pat Garrett. (By most accounts the title was a reference to Garrett’s honesty and rectitude, and to the show’s opening credits, in which Garrett’s long shadow stretches in front of him.)“He’s exactly what we were looking for, an actor with a flair for the unusual,” Mr. Peeples said in a TV Guide profile of Mr. Gulager shortly after the show first aired in 1960. “He lends a certain psychological depth to Billy.”The friendship between the lawman (played by Barry Sullivan) and the gun-toting rustler was fictionalized and greatly exaggerated over the show’s 75 episodes; many historians believe that Sheriff Garrett actually shot and killed Billy in 1881. Their fatal encounter never happened on the show, which ended abruptly in 1962.Mr. Gulager played a more lawful character on “The Virginian,” the first of three 1960s western series that ran for 90 minutes, which starred James Drury and Doug McClure. Mr. Gulager’s character on the show, Emmett Ryker, was introduced in the show’s third season when a rich man tried to hire him to murder a rancher. Although he refused to be a hired killer, he was framed for killing the man. After clearing his name, Ryker channeled his penchant for violence into the service of the law.On the series “The Virginian,” Mr. Gulager played a character who channeled his penchant for violence into the service of the law.NBC, via PhotofestIn Mr. Gulager’s first scene, Ryker was typically unflappable. He walked into a saloon and within moments angered a man playing cards. Ryker drew his gun on the card player before he could stand up, ending the conflict.Moments later a deputy sheriff asked Ryker where he learned to draw like that.“In the cradle,” he replied.Mr. Gulager’s acting career, which lasted well into the 21st century, was not relegated to the frontier. He appeared on non-western television shows including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Knight Rider” and “Murder, She Wrote,” and in several notable movies.Mr. Gulager, right, with Lee Marvin in “The Killers” (1964).The Criterion CollectionHe and Lee Marvin played hit men in “The Killers,” a 1964 film noir directed by Don Siegel and based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway that also starred Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes and, in what turned out to be his last movie, Ronald Reagan.In 1969 he played a mechanic in “Winning,” a film about auto racing with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. He played an older man who has a fling with his lover’s beautiful daughter in “The Last Picture Show,” Peter Bogdanovich’s celebrated 1971 study of a fading Texas town.He was also in more lowbrow fare, like the Keenen Ivory Wayans blaxploitation parody “I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka” (1988) and the horror films “The Return of the Living Dead” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2” (both 1985).His movie work continued well into his later years, including roles in the independent productions “Tangerine” (2015) and “Blue Jay” (2016). His final screen appearance was as a bookstore clerk in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” (2019).Mr. Gulager left the cast of “The Virginian” in 1968 to focus on directing and teaching. (The show remained on the air until 1971, becoming the third-longest-running western in television history, after “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza.”) His directing career foundered after the short film “A Day With the Boys” in 1969, but he became a popular teacher, running a workshop that focused on horror film acting and directing.“I tell the young students in my class that what we do is as important as the work of a man who grows the wheat, the doctor who saves lives, the architect who builds homes,” he said in an ABC news release before he starred in the TV movie “Stickin’ Together” in 1978. “What we do, in our best moments, is provide humanity with food for the spirit.”William Martin Gulager was born in Holdenville, Okla., on Nov. 16, 1928. He often said that he was part Cherokee; the name Clu came from “clu-clu,” a Cherokee word for the birds, known in English as martins, that were nesting at the Gulager home.His father, John Delancy Gulager, was an actor and vaudevillian who became a county judge in Muskogee, Okla., and who taught him acting from a young age, well before he graduated from Muskogee Central High School. His mother, Hazel Opal (Griffin) Gulager, worked at the local V.A. Hospital for 35 years.Mr. Gulager served stateside in the Marines from 1946 to 1948 before studying drama at Northeastern State College in Oklahoma and Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He continued his education in Paris, where he studied with the actor Jean-Louis Barrault and the mime Etienne Decroux.He married Miriam Byrd-Nethery, and they acted in summer stock and university theater. In 1955 both were in a production of the play “A Different Drummer” on the television series “Omnibus.” He continued acting in New York until 1958, when the Gulagers and their infant son, John, moved to Hollywood.Mr. Gulager’s wife died in 2003. Besides his son John, survivors include another son, Tom, and a grandson.John Gulager is a director of horror movies, notably the gory “Feast” (2005), which starred Henry Rollins and Balthazar Getty. That film and its two tongue-in-cheek sequels also featured the older Mr. Gulager as a shotgun-toting bartender battling fanged monsters in a Midwestern tavern. The second “Feast” movie was even more of a family affair.“You know, there are three generations of Gulagers in this movie,” John Gulager told the blog horror-movies.ca in an interview. One of them, named after Clu the elder, was Clu Gulager’s infant grandson.“He was 11 months old when we filmed it,” John Gulager added. “My dad said, ‘We have to get Baby Clu’s career started now.’ ”Christine Chung contributed reporting. More

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    Why ‘Diana’ Is the Show We Didn’t Deserve

    On the eve of a concert with three of the flop musical’s talented stars, time to celebrate a production that thrilled loyal fans — and at least one critic.Broadway’s comeback season was a hurricane. Not even the heavily awarded revival of a Sondheim favorite like “Company” could withstand shaky ticket sales brought on by a pandemic-wary theatergoing community.There was still much to praise, and much that will be seared into memory. But more than most other musicals that opened last season, the one whose songs and sheer audacity stand the best chance to live on in my heart — and on my shower playlists — is the one that shone briefly, amid a deluge of vitriol.The one that played a mere 59 performances, and whose Netflix presentation won five Razzie Awards: the ill-fated “Diana, the Musical.”This week, Roe Hartrampf, the show’s nefarious Prince Charles, will play a two-night engagement at 54 Below, joined by Jeanna de Waal (who portrayed Princess Diana) and, also on the first night, Erin Davie (Diana’s rival for Charles’s affections, Camilla Parker Bowles).Though they won’t be singing from its score, Hartrampf said the musical will be cheekily referenced throughout.At rehearsals for the club act — ironically enough, at a Midtown studio across from the Longacre Theater where they once reigned — the three reminisced with a mix of good humor and workmanlike acceptance. A promotional blurb for the concert, after all, nods knowingly at Hartrampf’s Razzie nomination, and the brief Broadway run.It also makes reference to the Netflix fiasco that followed after the musical premiered on the streaming service months ahead of its Broadway opening. Recorded without an audience in the middle of the pandemic shutdown, it landed with a thud and that response helped determine its eventual fate.“Part of the struggle was that the audience didn’t know what to expect from a musical about Diana,” Hartrampf said after the rehearsal. “They were sort of waiting for us to tell them, ‘You can laugh because this is a comedy, or stay quiet because it’s a drama.’ They needed to be shown what this piece was going to be.”When I reviewed “Diana” in November, I called it a “giddy orgy of theatrical excess” that combined the “preposterous high gloss” of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” with “‘The Simpsons’ ’ innate understanding of the overly-literal silliness that makes the form work.”By the time I attended the musical’s premature final performance barely a month later, the cast had leaned all the way into the absurdity. The hyperkinetic ensemble (some of the most all-out, on-point dancing of the season) was cheeky as ever, but the lead actors seemed to be in on the fun, too. De Waal’s naughty wink had grown more flamboyant, and the cast reveled in the extravagance of her expletive-laden song about the dress Diana wore to show up her romantic rival.“It was always supposed to be a rock show, it always had humor, and it was always supposed to be heightened,” de Waal said.De Waal and Hartrampf in a musical number in which Diana imagines herself in a disco instead of at a classical music concert.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThough the losers at the Razzies named her worst actress, de Waal’s extraordinary, vocally gymnastic performance earned a Drama Desk nomination. I would have handed her a Tony nomination, too, with a special citation for Grace Under Internet Fire. She’d already been apologizing for the Netflix special by the time the show opened, and kept off social media throughout its run.De Waal’s performance sold me on the idea that Diana Spencer was a 19-year-old robbed of a comfortable young adulthood, cynically plucked by stuffy royals for good optics, then discarded once her personhood got in the way. (That problem hasn’t gone away.) Her Diana was temperamental, petty and crass, but ultimately winning.The music, by the Bon Jovi keyboard player David Bryan, was as arena-ready as you’d expect, calling back to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s early marriage of rock bombast and theatrical silliness (Exhibit A: “Evita.”) The lyrics (by Bryan and Joe DiPietro) were scarcely more profound than a “Live Laugh Love” poster but, sung with full force, they stuck like Super Glue. Diana’s “I could use a prince to save me from my prince,” rather silly on paper, came across as a primal scream.And the director Christopher Ashley, a Tony winner for his work on “Come From Away,” kept “Diana” moving as seamlessly and hypnotically as the princess’ frenzied, tabloid-ready life. (Nathan Lucrezio, who played her biographer Andrew Morton on Broadway, will appear in Hartrampf’s act as well.)Among the criticisms aimed at “Diana” was that it exploited a real woman’s tragic story for pop consumption. To that point: Every biographical narrative can be said to be inherently reductive and exploitative. If the director Pablo Larraín and the actress Kristen Stewart can (deservedly) score awards love for their cinematic take on Diana as the “final girl” in a horror movie (2021’s “Spencer”), I see no reason this musical should be punished for molding the source material to fit the form’s razzle-dazzle structure.Was “Diana” tasteful or poetic? Definitely not. But it was fun. Remember fun? So many productions this season didn’t, setting their sights instead on scoring political points, to varying success and an even dimmer sense of play.You have to take a work on its own terms, and “Diana” set them 10 minutes in, when the soon-to-be princess took over cello duties from Mstislav Rostropovich and did a stage-dive into a royal crowd as Prince Charles did the robot. This fantasy sequence — illustrating how Diana would rather be on a date at a disco than at a dreary classical concert — reflected the show’s unapologetic commitment to pop maximalism.Though biographical obligations sometimes strangled the book, even its narrative failings were saved by outlandish directorial choices. (If you somehow forgot the dizzy tone during intermission, Act 2 opened with Diana’s secret lover, the riding instructor James Hewitt, shirtless astride a saddle, shrieking a fierce high E.)“As much as there was this group of people who loved it,” said Davie, at right, “there were others who were like, ‘How dare you?’”Hilary Swift for The New York TimesI count the glitzy show among works that, pardon my youthfulness, “slay”: highlighting the improbable achievements of an underdog (usually a woman) with the subtlety of a six-foot sword, and twice its shine.It’s what makes Dolly Levi’s arrival at the Harmonia Gardens so glamorous; Evita’s “Rainbow High” fashions so decadent; Momma Rose’s ambition so delicious. The spectacle of someone transcending their given situation is woven into the fabric of musical theater; Diana quick-changing through several outfits in one number, as she announces her plan to reclaim her visibility, had that in spades.Still, Davie admitted, “it turned a lot of people off. As much as there was this group of people who loved it, there were others who were like, ‘How dare you?’”As with many a critically reviled Broadway musical, those who loved it banded together, nicknaming themselves “Difanas.” They clung to the gowns, the belting, the insane boldness of an AIDS patient singing to the princess, “I may be unwell, but I’m handsome as hell.”One such fan, Lizzie Milanovich (who uses they/them pronouns) designed a custom “Diana” sweater and then tweeted an offer, expecting a few inquiries. They wound up fielding 180 orders, they told me, including one for Hartrampf.“We have to credit Twitter so much for creating the audience that we did have,” Hartrampf said. “The week the movie came out, Twitter was rough. But then the backlash to the backlash was so wonderful, with people defending our show and taking ownership of the material, and understanding what the show was meant to be.”Attendees at its final performance were the girls and the gays — theater aficionados, writers and performers who have gone down enough YouTube rabbit holes to know a diamond, however rough, when they see one.Mark my words: The show is primed for another look. Consider “Legally Blonde,” currently enjoying a critical re-evaluation thanks to a Lucy Moss-directed London revival, and continuing social media affection for its original, bubble gum pink production.Or consider the recent interest in revising the narratives around stars like Britney Spears, women devalued and discarded until a new generation happens to “rediscover” their worth. (Moss’s own “Six,” about an earlier set of royals, the wives of Henry VIII, gets ahead of the curve by directly addressing this schism.)I cannot wait for a group of downtown drag queens to mount a low-budget, high-camp production of “Diana” in 10 years. They’ll know exactly how to play it. Maybe that’s why a local queen bringing de Waal onstage to sing “Underestimated,” the musical’s opening solo, during show tunes night at a Fire Island Pines club — on the evening of the Tony Awards, no less — felt so spectacularly appropriate.Her soaring vocals in the fabulous finale live on through my headphones. While Sondheim’s oeuvre is the reason I sleep well at night, it is sonic moments like these that get me up in the morning. More