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    Late Night Praises Fox News Hosts for Their Acting Skills

    The news that Fox News anchors sent texts on Jan. 6 urging President Trump to speak out against the insurrection while blaming antifa on air was the talk of late night on Tuesday.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.Stop the InsanityLate night was aflutter on Tuesday with the revelations that the Fox News commentators Brian Kilmeade, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham sent pleading texts to Mark Meadows on Jan. 6, asking President Donald J. Trump to speak out and stop the insurrection.Stephen Colbert joked that Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, “even got an Instagram post from Judge Jeanine’s box of wine.”“Gee, if only they had some sort of media outlet where they could have said that publicly.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is like finding out the flight attendant who’s been telling you that it’s just a little turbulence is going back into the cockpit, like, ‘Doesn’t anybody know how to fly this thing? We’re all gonna die!’” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, it came out that Fox News hosts were begging for Trump to do something. And today Fox News hosts lit their tree on fire again just to change the subject.” — JIMMY FALLON“So, the Jan. 6 attack scared Laura Ingraham — and keep in mind, her side gig is appearing in your bathroom mirror if you whisper ‘Medicare for all’ three times.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The records show that then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows also received a text from Fox News host Brian Kilmeade that said, ‘Please get him on TV. Destroying everything we’ve accomplished.’ That is a shocking revelation — they had to beg Trump to go on TV?” — SETH MEYERS“Trump was like, ‘If I replied to every text that said “What you’re doing is crazy,” I’d never get anything done.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump didn’t want to hear it. Not only did Trump ignore texts from Fox News, he also dropped them from his family cellphone plan.” — JIMMY FALLON“And I love that they were so concerned that this could ruin Trump’s legacy: ‘If he gets somebody killed today, no one will remember that time he told everyone to drink bleach.” — TREVOR NOAH“If one person at your network has no integrity, that’s a problem. If nobody has integrity, that’s a company policy.” — TREVOR NOAH“If you’re looking for some silver lining here, I don’t think we give the Fox News gang enough credit for their acting — it’s really good.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (What’s His Number Edition)“According to newly released records, Donald Trump Jr. texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during January’s Capitol attack, urging him to make President Trump condemn the violence. Then he texted again, saying, ‘Fine, I’ll tell him myself — just give me his number.’” — SETH MEYERS“Yeah, Trump ignored the advice of those closest to him and also Don Jr.” — JIMMY FALLON“And then this text: He said, ‘Dad, you have to stop this right now.’ He wrote back, ‘Who is this?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You cannot give Don that number. It’s too risky — he might give it to Eric.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Don Jr. texted Meadows, asking him to do something. Meanwhile, Eric Trump texted, ‘Does anyone know where my Paw Patrol slippers are?’” — JAMES CORDEN“Now clearly, Don Jr.’s texts didn’t work, which honestly I’m kind of glad about because the only thing worse than an insurrection would have been to thank Don Jr. for stopping the insurrection.” — TREVOR NOAH“Of course, Don Jr. has spent the last 11 months praising his father’s lack of action. And Eric — his son, Eric Trump, didn’t send any texts at all. He did not text Mark Meadows, because, well, in fairness he was stuck in a claw machine at a Dave & Buster’s in Silver Spring.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingWill Forte joined his friend and former “Saturday Night Live” co-star Seth Meyers for some day drinking on Tuesday’s “Late Night.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday Night“The Late Show” will celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Lord of the Rings.”Also, Check This OutJamie Mccarthy/Getty ImagesJohn Cameron Mitchell takes inspiration from New Orleans, modern fairy tales and Mavis Staples. More

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    Michael Gargiulo Dies at 95; Documented the Moscow ‘Kitchen Debate’

    Sent to the Soviet Union in 1959 to promote color television, he ended up taping what he later called a “turning point” in U.S.-Soviet relations.Michael Gargiulo, an Emmy Award-winning television director and producer who immortalized the impromptu 1959 “kitchen debate” between Vice President Richard M. Nixon and the Soviet leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, in Moscow, died on Nov. 30 at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.His son, Michael, an anchor for “Today in New York” on NBC, said the cause was congestive heart failure.The made-for-television moment took place during a brief thaw in the Cold War, with the finger-wagging performances by Nixon, on the eve of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, and the pugnacious Khrushchev starting in the kitchen of a model home at an American trade fair in Sokolniki Park.The two world leaders had been steered to the $14,000 “typical American house” by William Safire, who would later become a speechwriter for Nixon and an opinion columnist for The New York Times, but who at the time was handling public relations for a Long Island homebuilder. (It was Mr. Safire who gave the house the name “Splitnik,” because it was bisected by a walkway for spectators.)The largely good-natured tit-for-tat escalated as Nixon and Khrushchev wended their way through the exhibition hall. They were headed for the studio and control room that Mr. Gargiulo (pronounced gar-JOOL-oh) and his team had assembled for RCA at the invitation of the State Department to promote American technological superiority in color television.“As they were walking in, we were already recording,” Mr. Gargiulo recalled in an interview with his son in 2019. “They didn’t even know we were rolling.”Through interpreters, the U.S. vice president and the Soviet leader conducted a guns-and-butter debate on the merits of capitalism versus Communism, which Mr. Gargiulo and his team shot, ostensibly so they could immediately replay it to demonstrate the wonders of color TV.But while Nixon had been warned to be on his best behavior (so Khrushchev would accept an invitation to a subsequent summit meeting), neither official could resist a microphone and a camera.Nixon acknowledged Soviet advances in outer space; Khrushchev, sporting an incompatible Panama hat and oversize suit, conceded nothing.“In another seven years we will be on the same level as America,” he said. “In passing you by, we will wave to you.”Mr. Gargiulo said the two men had promised that the debate would be broadcast in both Russia and the United States. But a few hours after it ended, he said, Kremlin aides demanded that he turn the original tape over to them.By then, it had already been spirited out of the Soviet Union by NBC (which was part of RCA at the time) to be shared with CBS and ABC, but Mr. Gargiulo offered to share a copy with the Soviets. As a result, the debate was seen on both sides of the Iron Curtain that evening.“It was what we call a virtual draw,” Mr. Gargiulo said of the confrontation.The Moscow trip — on which he was accompanied by his wife, who was pregnant with their son — left him with warm memories as well as accolades.“I never felt more patriotic,” he said. “This was world leaders taping on the sly and slipping it out of the country.”“I can’t imagine anybody thinking that was not a turning point in both of our relationships,” he added.Things ended up better for Mr. Gargiulo than they did for the debaters, at least in the short term. Nixon lost the 1960 presidential race, and Khrushchev was deposed in 1964.Mr. Gargiulo accepted a Daytime Emmy Award from the actor John Gabriel and the model Cheryl Tiegs in 1978. He won 10 Emmys in his career, including a lifetime achievement award in 2015.Disney via Getty ImagesHe began his career by directing stage shows in the Catskills, then joined NBC in New York, where he became staff director of local programming. He directed the game shows “To Tell the Truth,” “The Price Is Right,” “Match Game,” “Password” and “The $10,000 Pyramid.” He also directed special events for CBS, including “All-American Thanksgiving Day Parade,” a pastiche of parade coverage from New York and other cities.His final directing credit was the Tournament of Roses Parade on CBS in 2003.He won 10 Daytime Emmys in his career, including a lifetime achievement award in 2015.Michael Ralph Gargiulo was born on Sept. 23, 1926, in Brooklyn to Louis and Josephine (Talamo) Gargiulo. He grew up above his father’s restaurant, a Coney Island landmark.He attended St. Augustine’s High School in Brooklyn and completed high school while serving in the Caribbean Defense Command of the Army Air Forces at the end of World War II. He graduated from the University of Missouri on the G.I. Bill.In 1958, he married Dorothy Rosato. In addition to their son, she survives him, as do their daughter, Susan, who works for Nickelodeon, and three grandchildren. More

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    'The Search for Snoopy,' a 'Peanuts' Experience, Is in the Works

    An adventure awaits visitors in Honolulu in “The Search for Snoopy,” starting in March.“Peanuts” fans who have dreamed of visiting Snoopy’s red doghouse, Lucy’s therapy booth (only 5 cents!) or Charlie Brown’s classroom will have their chance next year, with an interactive experience in Honolulu called “The Search for Snoopy: A Peanuts Adventure.”The event will take visitors through the familiar scenery of Charles M. Schulz’s newspaper strips and cartoons, and will be presented at Ala Moana Center, an open-air mall, starting in March.“The beauty of ‘Peanuts’ is that there are 17,500-and-some-odd strips that Sparky — Charles Schulz — created over the 50 years of ‘Peanuts’ in syndication,” which provided many stories, themes and locations to mine, Craig Herman, a Peanuts Worldwide vice president, said in a conference call with the show’s producer. (Original “Peanuts” strips were published from Oct. 2, 1950, through Feb. 13, 2000. The last original installment came out the day after Schulz’s death.)For the Hawaii experience, Peanuts Worldwide partnered with Kilburn Live, the company that produced an interactive Dr. Seuss Experience, in a collaboration that began three years ago. “It takes a long time to get it right,” Mark Manuel, the chief executive of Kilburn, said in the interview.Other set pieces in “The Search for Snoopy” include Charlie Brown’s bedroom, where visitors can release a Charlie Brown-like “Aaugh!” that will be measured and ranked, and Charlie Brown’s classroom, where participants can hear themselves in the indecipherable garble of the adults as they were heard in “Peanuts” on TV. A national tour of the show is planned following its run in Honolulu. More

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    John Cameron Mitchell Finds Joy in Mavis Staples and ‘Veneno’

    On the eve of concerts celebrating “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the writer and performer also shares why “The Gnostic Gospels” feeds his soul.“I haven’t had such a good role since Hedwig,” John Cameron Mitchell said.He was talking about Joe Exotic of “Tiger King” fame — and comparing the chance to play him with “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” his 1998 rock musical and 2001 movie about a genderqueer East German singer stranded in Kansas after a botched sex-change operation.That tale, rapturous and raunchy, still reverberates, with people outside a West Village cafe slowing to gawk or offer up praise as Mitchell elaborated on his cultural essentials recently.At the end of the month, he and his “Hedwig” co-creator, Stephen Trask, will reunite for two nights in “Return to the Origin of Love” at the Town Hall in Manhattan. Billed as a New Year’s catharsis with a heaping serving of debauchery, the show melds songs and stories about the making of “Hedwig” with newer material like “Nation of One,” the duo’s first song in 20 years and part of Mitchell’s lockdown album “New American Dream.”It also includes “Call Me Joe,” an ode to Joe Exotic, the gay, polygamist, now-imprisoned zoo owner immortalized in Netflix’s “Tiger King,” a character so delicious that it inspired him to audition for the first time in 27 years.A mulleted Mitchell will star in “Joe Exotic,” a fictional series coming out on Peacock in 2022. He intends it to be a fully rounded portrayal, with fewer of the “eye-catching hooks” that reduced him to “that crazy guy over there.”“I almost feel like I was playing Richard III — an antihero who’s clearly out of his mind, but strangely admirable,” Mitchell said.Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Veneno”Television has rocked lately. I was most moved by the Spanish series “Veneno” on HBO Max. “Veneno” means “poison,” and it’s brilliant, just brilliant, about the legendary trans celebrity Cristina La Veneno, whose life was equally inspirational and cautionary. Simply the best series in 15 years and criminally unsung. I’ve become friends with Los Javis [the duo Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo], who are making it, and they’re going to present our Origin of Love Tour in Spain.2. Silvio RodríguezI’ve been marinating in the songs of the great Cuban trovador Silvio Rodríguez. I was looking for a song in Spanish to sing in Mexico City, and my Mexican singer friend said, “Listen to this song called ‘Ojalá’” — which was stunning. And I was like, “Who is this guy?” He really is in the Latin American world as important as Dylan. He’s connected to Castro’s revolution, but the purview is larger and is very much about the heart. I cover his song “Casiopea,” about an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth, on “New American Dream.”3. “The Gnostic Gospels” by Elaine PagelsIt’s a formative text for me, about the Christian texts which never made it into the Bible. [Her scholarship] spoke to me as a lapsed queer Catholic. I saw a much less misogynistic church, the idea of androgyny being the highest level of humanity and finding the divinity within. And along with Plato’s “Symposium,” it inspired “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”4. My House in New OrleansCovid made me question my monogamous relationship with New York, and I traveled widely. New Orleans kept drawing me back. That city groans under climate change, poverty and drugs but also shimmers with music, art, a neighborly walk-around culture and crawfish. I bought a house there from a chapter of the Order of the Oriental Templars once run by Aleister Crowley, who had his own take on Gnosticism. The energy in the house is powerful, and we’re adding our queer arty vibes to create a destination for community creativity.5. Sci-Fi FantasyI acted up a storm in the last year, but in my downtime, I reverted to my youth and devoured dozens of sci-fi fantasy books. My favorite authors have always been women. They’re less into the hardware and more focused on emotion and theme. When I was very young, Andre Norton was my favorite. She took on a male name because boys wouldn’t read a book by a woman. I’d always heard of Octavia Butler but only started reading her in the last couple of years. She’s very much about creating community in adversity, being Black and a little gender-nonconforming herself.6. Douglas Stuart’s NovelsI’m deep into the galleys of Stuart’s upcoming “Young Mungo,” the follow-up to his gorgeous Booker Prize-winner, “Shuggie Bain.” “Mungo” follows a Glaswegian 15-year-old in a similar poverty-stricken setting as “Shuggie.” Stuart’s aching empathy and sublime images really got their hooks in me like an ancestral tug. My wonderful and difficult mum, Joan Cameron, grew up in Glasgow. Both she and her sister, sweet Aunt Mary, passed recently, and reading Stuart inspired me to create a song with Ted Nash called “You Can Go Now,” featuring Wynton Marsalis and Catherine Russell as my mum.7. Mavis StaplesI was floored by Questlove’s doc, “Summer of Soul.” When Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples tear into “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” I was transported to heaven — not the airy-fairy buffet staffed by winged cater-waiters, but to the mountaintop accessed by a steep and bloody path. I’m presently commissioning a stained-glass portrait of Ms. Staples by the great Hadyn Butler. I worship the ground that she walks on.8. Modern Fairy TalesMy own nonbinariness — such a clinical word for a natural state — was recently stirred and shaken by two brilliant books: “Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl” by Andrea Lawlor and “Venus as a Boy” by Luke Sutherland. The former is a punk fable about a femboy who finds he can alter his body and gender at will. The protagonist of “Venus,” however, alters his body and gender at someone else’s will. Both are lonely — and heroic.9. Films by Stephen WinterMy buddy Stephen was finally acknowledged as one of our most courageous filmmakers by the inclusion of two of his films on the Criterion Channel. He produced Jonathan Caouette’s surreal auto-doc “Tarnation.” But more important, he created two seminal queer Black features: “Chocolate Babies” (1996), about a gang of H.I.V. positive “terrorists” fighting AIDS by any means necessary; and “Jason and Shirley” (2015) about the dark symbiotic relationship between the Jewish filmmaker Shirley Clarke and her gay Black cabaret artist muse, Jason Holliday.10. Lockdown PodcastsWhile luxuriating in “Dolly Parton’s America,” I rereleased Bryan Weller’s and my musical “Anthem: Homunculus,” starring Cynthia Erivo, Glenn Close and Patti LuPone, as a free podcast. I play a guy crowdfunding his cancer care who finds that his brain tumor is sentient — voiced by Laurie Anderson, naturally. I also provided voices for my brother Colin MacKenzie Mitchell’s [upcoming] “The Laundronauts,” starring the late great Ed Asner, about a boy who is stuffed into a washer by a bully and disappears. His friends, the Laundronauts, must go in and rescue him. I play the Spirit of Absentia, the land beyond the washer where all the lost things go: socks, coins and boys. Along with their hopes, fears and dreams. Lockdown metaphors abound. More

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    ‘Insecure’ Recap, Season 5, Episode 8: Fears and Desires

    This week, Issa is thriving personally and professionally, but a series of dreams (or nightmares) injects uncertainty into her situation.Season 5, Episode 8, ‘Choices, Okay!?’Let’s talk about dreams, a popular subject of poems, songs, books and plays. In life, they can give us something to strive for; in drama, they’re a useful way to illustrate a character’s hopes and fears.In this episode, Issa has a series of dreams — or possibly nightmares — and they all come up Lawrence. “Choices, Okay!?” is more about the dreams that Issa has not chased down and brought to life than about the ones that she has managed to reach.This episode starts with Issa and Nathan splayed around Issa’s loved-in bedroom. Issa is thinking about squirrels until she remembers that her friend Tiffany might be moving away. She does a lot of daydreaming in this episode. After a quip or two, Nathan gets up and heads to the bathroom to take what appears to be medication, a welcome sign that he is staying dedicated to his health and well-being.The couple is clearly getting along — it seems Nathan was able to show up for Issa in the way she wanted. She’s wearing his T-shirt around her house and he says he loves making her coffee, and then he asks Issa if they should move in together.“Wow, do you think we’re ready for that?” she replies, looking somewhat stunned.“I don’t know, maybe,” he responds with a shrug. “It will save us some money.”Then they put a pin in the conversation and move on.Initially, Issa’s professional life appears to be blossoming along with her romantic one. In a dreamlike sequence, she is offered what seems like a high number to partner with MBW. She puts on a show at the Miracle Theater in Los Angeles and expertly walks her sponsors through the process — she is in charge, she knows her talking points and has her bases covered and then some. Then it appears we move forward in the timeline and she is on a panel being interviewed by Elaine Welteroth; it looks like our girl has professionally leveled up.Suddenly, she’s wearing a fly suit in first-class, sitting next to Ty Dollar $ign, who is on his way to Los Angeles to work with Crenshawn. Then Issa arrives at home. Nathan is at the house and the house is beautiful, that’s when I knew she was daydreaming. It might be when she figured it out, too — she kind of snaps out of it and asks Nathan when they moved to that apartment.At this point, the episode dedicated some time to Kelli, who was helping Molly’s parents with their estate planning, so I want to do the same. What would “Insecure” be without her? She is always on time, unabashed, constantly pushing the girls to take better care of themselves. She will DM Daniel Kaluuya and then say he DM’d her first, because why not? She is like a human confetti popper of joy and hilarious rage. (This week she told Issa’s brother, Ahmal, that she was going to write a TV show about him just so she could kill him off.) When she is helping Molly’s parents, she eases the tension with her on-point witticism and jokes. We all need a Kelli.Issa’s second daydream of the episode was both more aspirational and more fraught. In this one, she partners up with Crenshawn, who apologizes for his behavior on social media, and opens up two locations with him. She is known and loved in the community and plays spades with the ice cream man on Sundays. (Glad to hear that she finally learned how.) Ty Dollar $ign partners up with MBW instead, and promotes water on bus ads.Issa, on the other hand, receives the key to Inglewood from Tyra Banks — we all want to receive something from Tyra after watching her pass out headshots on “America’s Next Top Model” for years, I get it — and has a day named after her. At the end of this dream, she goes home and Nathan walks out to greet her. But then when he walks into a different room, Lawrence is who comes back out.“I’m proud of you,” he says to her. “You had a lot of options but you made a choice that made you happy, and now you’re being rewarded for it.”He goes in for a kiss and Issa screams.Issa has it bad — even when she’s daydreaming about what her life could become, Lawrence is still in play. Toward the end of the episode, she’s having dinner with Nathan at her place and he goes in the next room. When he says that he wants her to be happy, Issa hears Lawrence’s voice and braces herself for him to walk out of the room, but Nathan walks out instead. Did she look a little disappointed?In Issa’s real life, Nathan is her boyfriend and that’s who is in her house. Her dreams are turning into nightmares; is that what happens to dreams deferred? Will Issa try to turn her dream — ending up with Lawrence, it seems — into reality, no matter how misguided that move might be? Or will her actual reality be enough for her? More

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    Stephen Colbert Comments on the ‘Slides of Sedition’

    Colbert couldn’t believe Congress is currently investigating a 38-page PowerPoint document detailing plans to overturn the 2020 election.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.‘Slides of Sedition’The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is looking into a 38-page PowerPoint document sent to President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that included plans to overturn the 2020 election.“PowerPoint? They weren’t just trying to overturn democracy, they were trying to bore it to death,” Stephen Colbert said on Monday night.“So what was in these slides of sedition? We’re not exactly sure yet, but there is one deck that’s been circulating, that may be the deck in question, and one of the slides on that was a list of recommendations, including a plan to ‘declare a national security emergency.’ I’m sure exactly how you do that. I assume by breaking into every broadcast using the emergency [expletive] system.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“They were also planning to declare electronic voting in all states invalid. Instead, they wanted to rely on ‘legal and genuine paper ballot counts.’ OK, so if you can’t trust computers, how are you giving your presentation, via PowerPoint pigeon? They’re staging a coup-coup!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s right, they wrote down their plans for a coup in a PowerPoint. You know what that means — Congress is going to have to subpoena Clippy. That’s from our new segment, ‘Jokes from 1995.’” — SETH MEYERS“Even the Mafia knows to use code words. If the Mafia ever made a PowerPoint presentation, it would say something vague like, ‘Plan for the guys at the place to do the thing.’ ‘OK, boss, what’s the next slide?’ ‘There’s no more slides. There’s just the one slide.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Elon Musk Edition)“Time magazine today unveiled their annual person of the year, and that person is Elon Musk or as I call him, Old Sheldon.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Person of the year is believed to be the highest honor ever awarded to a person who cuts his own hair.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In response to this, Jeff Bezos just bought Time magazine.” — JAMES CORDEN“He was going to go out and buy a copy, but then he realized he’d have to pay taxes on it, so it was, you know, not worth it.” — SETH MEYERS“It’s important to note this is not necessarily a compliment. Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump were also named person of the year. Time — for real — Time is basically your dad watching a bad Super Bowl commercial, and going, ‘Hey, love him or hate him, we’re all talking about him, right?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Man, I’m so happy for him. Like the guy could really use an ego boost, you know?” — TREVOR NOAH“And honestly you can’t argue with this. I mean, richest man in the world, who also control space, crypto and electric cars? Who would even be second place, like maybe Pete Davidson, maybe?” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, Musk received the honor for his work in space exploration and after he bought 10 million subscriptions to Time magazine.” — JIMMY FALLON“I’m kidding, although it was a little strange that everyone at Time drove into work today in a brand-new Tesla.” — JIMMY FALLON“Being named person of the year is a big deal. It’s basically ‘sexiest man alive,’ but you’re competing against the Dalai Lama and the pope.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingTom Holland, Regina King and Ted Danson are just a few of the celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves in a new edition of the popular recurring segment of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightChelsea Handler will stop by Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutJim Henson with Big Bird, as seen in “Street Gang: How We Got Sesame Street.” The HBO documentary uses file footage and new interviews to detail the early years of the influential show.Sesame Workshop/HBOA new documentary about “Sesame Street” details how social purpose has always been a part of the long-running children’s show. More

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    Review: In ‘Flying Over Sunset,’ Getting High With the Stars

    A new musical imagines the all-singing, all-dancing LSD trips of Aldous Huxley, Clare Boothe Luce and Cary Grant.To a perpetual square, nothing is as mystifying as another person’s high. Or so I learned in college, during the heyday of chemically induced inner journeys — and again at the Vivian Beaumont Theater the other night. Though sometimes mesmerizing, “Flying Over Sunset,” the new musical about LSD that opened there on Monday, is mostly bewildering, and further proof that transcendence can’t be shared.It admits as much in its structure, which throws into one scenario (by James Lapine) three famous seekers who never actually got high together. We meet them separately, starting with the philosopher and novelist Aldous Huxley (Harry Hadden-Paton), tripping at a Hollywood drugstore in the late 1950s. Next comes the greatest of all male movie stars, Cary Grant (Tony Yazbeck), demanding the drug — then legal — from his second wife’s psychiatrist. Finally we drop in on the playwright and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce (Carmen Cusack), hallucinating “a sapphire dragonfly” soon after being nominated as ambassador to Brazil.Much of this is true — if not the details of the visions then the settings and situations. But to advance the story beyond that, Lapine has to indulge in speculative nonfiction, a musical theater hallucinogen he has used to great effect before, in his play “Twelve Dreams,” inspired by Jungian imagery, and in his book for the musical “Sunday in the Park With George,” about the painter Georges Seurat. Perhaps recalling Seurat’s pointillistic technique, he writes in a preface to “Flying Over Sunset” that his script “connects the dots” of known history.It certainly connects the major players, bringing them together counterfactually, at the end of Act I, to discuss their common interest over champagne at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. In Act II, with the philosopher Gerald Heard (Robert Sella) as their “guide,” they indulge that interest together at Luce’s Malibu estate.Their trips take up perhaps two-thirds of the show — and 100 percent of the songs, by Tom Kitt and Michael Korie. As a concept, that makes sense, not just because music is arguably the most transcendent of art forms (and is often lovely here) but also because the characters, as Lapine presents them, apparently need to be high to be fully alive.Bottoms up: From left, Sella, Hadden-Paton, Cusack and Yazbeck prepare to embark on simultaneous LSD trips.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt’s hard to argue with him from personal experience; as he recently told The Times, he used LSD frequently while in graduate school. But the actual lives of Huxley, Grant and Luce do not support the idea that they were lacking in the rich complexity of humanity when sober.To correct for that problem, Lapine, who also directed the show, steers “Flying Over Sunset” in some very strange and ultimately tiresome directions. First, he assigns each character a buried emotional problem that needs resolving. Huxley is grieving the death of his wife. Grant, having never fully reconciled his imperturbable public persona with the terrorized child he once was, has problems with women. And Luce somehow feels guilt over the deaths of her mother and daughter, in car accidents she had nothing to do with.There’s an overly programmatic quality to that setup, especially as delivered in the exceedingly flat dialogue Lapine seems to favor. (“I think what’s interesting,” Heard says, “is that you each seem to be at a turning point in your lives.”) Perhaps the flatness is meant to set up the floridness of the trips, which compensate for the lack of real-world dramatic development by growing more and more outré as the show, at two hours and 40 minutes, wears on.The first of those trips is at least efficient in characterizing Huxley, whom Hadden-Paton winningly portrays as a goofy know-it-all nerd. Spotting a Botticelli monograph at the drugstore, he imagines characters from the painting “The Return of Judith to Bethulia” coming to life somewhat randomly around him, to the strains of some beautiful bel canto pastiche by Kitt and Korie. Here and elsewhere, you may be reminded of “Sunday in the Park” for its tableaux vivants and shimmering orchestral effects, if not for its thematic discipline.And Grant’s maiden trip, involving an otherwise flat-footed encounter with his younger self (Atticus Ware) and violent father (Nehal Joshi), allows for a showstopping dance routine to a music hall ditty called “Funny Money.” The choreography for Yazbeck and Ware, by the tap phenom Michelle Dorrance, almost obliterates any qualms about the song’s psychobabbly premise.But for an audience not invested in Lapine’s personal imagery, the second act, with its nonstop LSD sequences, goes quickly downhill. A number called “I Like to Lead,” in which Sophia Loren, Grant’s co-star in the 1958 movie “Houseboat,” slaps him around in an allegory of female domination, is incoherent. Another, in which Grant imagines himself as a “giant penis rocket ship” on a “secret mission” to spare the earth from disaster, is merely mortifying. Luce’s visit to heaven to see her mother and daughter, in a song called “An Interesting Place,” is as banal as that title.Emily Pynenburg as Sophia Loren and Yazbeck as Cary Grant in a number recalling a scene from the 1958 movie “Houseboat.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt least there are compensations in the typically gorgeous technical wizardry of the Lincoln Center Theater production. The lighting (by Bradley King) and the projections (by 59 Productions) on Beowulf Boritt’s swirling-circles set — along with the immersively psychedelic sound by Dan Moses Schreier — bring us closer to the sensation of melting consciousness than the script ever manages. At times even the costumes (by Toni-Leslie James) seem to be tripping. And Dorrance’s choreography for the show’s opening, arranging the cast’s varying footfalls in rhythmic counterpoint, is sublime.These are not enough to outweigh Lapine’s failure to dramatize what he evidently sees as the life-enhancing possibilities of mind-altering drugs. If those possibilities exist, surely they are not to be found in a direct linkup of symptoms and cures, as proposed by “Flying Over Sunset.” During his Botticelli immersion, Huxley claims that his right eye, severely damaged from a childhood illness, has started “working” again. Grant and Luce, having faced unfinished emotional business, emerge from their trips refreshed and ready to move on.But LSD, on its own, is not psychoanalysis by other means. And if the drug offers access to a shared consciousness that can help humans connect, neither the show nor the subsequent lives of its real-life characters demonstrate it. Luce, a brittle charmer in Cusack’s smart rendering, drifted ever rightward politically; Grant married three more times.As for Huxley, despite his supposedly improved eyesight, his overall health deteriorated quickly. On his deathbed in 1963, he asked to be injected with 100 micrograms of LSD. He was still a believer — but in what? Some mysteries, this musical among them, are too interior to be understood.Flying Over SunsetThrough Feb. 6 at the Lincoln Center Theater, Manhattan; flyingoversunset.com. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More

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    Review: In ‘Best of Enemies,’ a TV Duel Becomes a Theater Gem

    James Graham’s new play draws parallels between the bad-tempered 1968 debates between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal and the rancorous public arena of today.LONDON — History comes hurtling to life in “Best of Enemies,” the latest attempt from the prolific playwright James Graham (“Ink,” “Quiz”) to put flesh on the bare bones of the past. Chronicling a sequence of televised face-offs that transfixed the United States in 1968, Graham once again shows a gift for mining the annals of politics and journalism for real theatrical gems. The result, at the Young Vic through Jan. 22, is the most riveting play in London just now.It helps that the personalities involved in those 10 TV debates were William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal, two richly articulate men of any dramatist’s dreams. On the one side was Buckley (played here by David Harewood), founder of The National Review and a conservative grandee; on the other was Vidal (Charles Edwards), the pleasure-seeking novelist and playwright with two homes in Italy and a withering disregard for the “Christian values” Buckley espoused.Ideological opposites, the pair were brought together by ABC to restore the flagging ratings of a network dryly referred to early in the play as the “almost broadcasting company.” Drawing inspiration from a 2015 film documentary of the same name, Graham sets their increasingly barbed exchanges against the backdrop of a tumultuous summer. We’re reminded, via Luke Halls’s video design, of the riots and protests that were tearing at America, just as Buckley and Vidal tore into one another. (Bunny Christie’s set is a horseshoe-shaped soundstage with screens perched above the action.)Luke Halls’s video design, on screens in a set designed by Bunny Christie, evokes the turbulent summer of 1968.Wasi DanijuGraham’s narrative begins at the end, with his opponents clearly disturbed by a shift in their discussion from which there is no turning back. Vidal has denounced Buckley on air during the Democratic convention in Chicago as “a crypto-Nazi,” and Buckley has retaliated by dismissing Vidal as “queer.” The play then rewinds and charts the course back to that on-air debacle, but we also seem to be witnessing a descent into ad hominem argument that has only gathered in intensity to this day.Graham’s obvious theatrical prototype is “Frost/Nixon,” Peter Morgan’s 2006 play, which Ron Howard later made into a film. But the stakes here seem higher and the context broader: Jeremy Herrin’s deft production brings in cameos by Aretha Franklin (Justina Kehinde) — “they know who I am,” she snaps when she is introduced — and Andy Warhol (Tom Godwin). The actor John Hodgkinson, doubling parts, plays Chicago’s bellicose mayor, Richard Daley, and the ABC News anchor Howard K. Smith, both of whom he does well.James Baldwin (Syrus Lowe, excellent), another onetime debating opponent of Buckley’s, is seen now and again, commenting on the personalities and the fallout between them: “Whatever the hate, wherever it comes from, it will always eventually destroy the one hating,” he tells us.From left: Emilio Doorgasingh, Kevin McMonagle, Syrus Lowe and John Hodgkinson.Wasi DanijuGraham sufficiently connects the vitriol between Buckley and Vidal with the contempt, and worse, that dominates the airwaves now, but you slightly recoil when someone belabors a point. “More and more, we’re divided into our own communities of concern,” a media analyst (Kehinde again) remarks near the end, bemoaning the way in which TV has increasingly carved up American life.Even then, the feral energy between the two leads proves irresistible. Vidal is a plum role, and the wonderful Edwards is suitably dapper and silver-tongued, not least when on the offensive: “Do you read?” he asks Buckley. “You could learn a great deal.” We clock Vidal’s predatory eye — “speaking of eating, hello” he remarks libidinously to a young man (Sam Otto) who will become his aide and bedmate — alongside his exhaustive breadth of historical knowledge.Buckley, far from being the straw man of the pair, is arguably the more complicated. Casually disdainful and airily patronizing, he is given tremendous gravitas by Harewood, a Black British actor cunningly cast against expectation as a white establishment figure who was taken to task for bigotry more than once.Speaking in a lower register than Buckley, Harewood requires that we listen afresh to Buckley, as we do to Vidal: both men at ease with their characters’ fast-talking fluency of thought. And if their shared fate was to cross the line that separates reasonable debate from rancor, well, welcome to the world today, and to the coarsening of the public arena that “Best of Enemies” brings stingingly to life.Best of EnemiesThrough Jan. 22, 2022 at the Young Vic in London; youngvic.org. More