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    Stephen Colbert Holds the Republican Caucus in Contempt

    Colbert noted that the House voted to hold Mark Meadows in criminal contempt, “and the rest of us can just keep holding him in regular contempt.”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.Consequences, ConsequencesOn Tuesday night, the House voted to hold Mark Meadows, who served as chief of staff to former President Donald J. Trump, in criminal contempt for refusing to cooperate with its investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.“Yes, hell yes! Criminal contempt — and the rest of us can just keep holding him in regular contempt,” Stephen Colberts said on Wednesday.“The consequences are severe. Meadows could be sentenced to a year in prison, or even worse, another month working for Trump.” — JIMMY FALLON“Of course, Meadows needs a good lawyer, so the first thing he did was pull up Rudy Giuliani’s number and delete it.” — JIMMY FALLON“The Republican caucus is an accessory to this coup, and we recently got more evidence of that in the form of text messages to Mark Meadows, like this one received on Jan. 7 from a Republican lawmaker: ‘Yesterday was a terrible day.’ Well, I mean, at least we can all agree on that.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT‘We tried everything we could in our objection to the six states. I’m sorry nothing worked.’ Oh, so he regrets not being able to drown Lady Liberty in a bathtub. It’s like sending a sympathy card that says, ‘My deepest condolences that you lived. I was rooting for the tumor!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“So, who sent these messages? Well, the identity of these lawmakers was not being disclosed, so people on Twitter are now guessing names like Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley — and you can play the home version in the fun new game ‘Clue-less.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“These messages have the ring of unfiltered truth because they’re taken from Mark Meadows’ two personal phones — and nothing says ‘innocent’ like a second cellphone.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Holiday Parties Edition)“The White House is skipping their annual holiday parties because of Covid this year — and because Joe Biden goes to sleep at 4 p.m.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is in stark contrast to the previous White House’s ‘Catch the holiday fever’ themed droplet jamborees.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The White House just announced, due to Covid concerns, instead of the traditional holiday parties, he’s inviting guests to come see the decorations on a 30-minute self-guided tour, which is just a fancy way of Biden saying, ‘Come if you want, but I ain’t gonna be there!’” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, a self-guided tour of a historic Washington building. That’s basically how Fox News described Jan. 6.” — JIMMY FALLON“The Democratic National Committee held its annual holiday party last night outside of the Hotel Washington, due to the spread of the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the Republican holiday party just added more mistletoe.” — SETH MEYERS“President Biden attended the D.N.C.’s annual holiday party last night and gave a 10-minute speech in just under an hour.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingSamantha Bee modernized “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” to show support for elves and their unions.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe longtime friends Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen will appear on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutThe author bell hooks in 1995. Her work, across some 30 books, encompassed literary criticism, children’s fiction, self-help, memoir and poetry. Monica Almeida/The New York TimesThe pathbreaking Black feminist writer bell hooks died on Wednesday. She was 69. More

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    ‘Selling Kabul’ Holds Up a New Mirror After the Taliban Takeover

    Sylvia Khoury’s play, which takes place over one night in Afghanistan in 2013, has only deepened after a pandemic postponement.In March 2020, “Selling Kabul” was just two weeks from starting previews when the theater industry suddenly went dark.The set — a modest living room in the Afghan capital — sat empty for over 19 months, another abandoned apartment in Midtown Manhattan. Still, the cast and crew stayed in touch, regularly video chatting and sharing their ongoing research.But in August, when the United States ended its longest war and the Taliban took over, their conversations changed. What did their play mean now, in this new geopolitical reality? Had their duty to their characters changed? What memories and frustrations would audiences now be bringing to the performance?“We were in almost daily contact about the changing situation in Afghanistan,” the director, Tyne Rafaeli, said, “and starting to understand and analyze how that changing situation was going to affect our play.”Sylvia Khoury, the playwright, also wrestled with the new resonance of her work. Ultimately, she decided not to alter the text, wanting to honor the historical moment and the individual experiences that had generated it.“The time that we’re in really colors certain moments of the play in different ways,” Khoury said in a video interview last month after the show began previews. “I haven’t changed them. A play is a fixed thing, as history continues.”“Selling Kabul” takes place in 2013, as the Obama administration began its long withdrawal of troops. Khoury wrote it in 2015, after speaking with several interpreters waiting for Special Immigrant Visas. And because that visa program, created by Congress to give refuge to Afghans and Iraqis who helped the U.S. military, requires rigorous vetting, many have been stuck in bureaucratic limbo for years. Now many American allies and partners remain in the country, potentially vulnerable to Taliban reprisals.“That time elapsed really speaks to a profound moral failure,” Khoury said. “That time elapsing, in itself, really showed us our own shame.”“Selling Kabul,” a Playwrights Horizons production that opened earlier this month and is scheduled to close Dec. 23, shines a light on the human cost of America’s foreign conflicts. It neither reprimands its audience nor offers catharsis. Instead, Khoury delivers an intense, intimate look at four people caught in a web of impossible choices.“If I still bit my nails I would have no nails left now,” Alexis Soloski wrote in her review for The New York Times..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In the play, Taroon, who was an interpreter for the U.S. military, is waiting for a promised visa. He has just become a father — his wife had their son just before the play starts — but he cannot be with them. He’s in hiding at his sister Afiya’s apartment, where he has been holed up for four months hoping to evade the Taliban. But on this evening, they seem to be growing closer and closer.Taroon has to leave Kabul. And he has to leave soon.“A play is a fixed thing, as history continues,” the playwright Sylvia Khoury said about her decision not to update her play after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August.Elias Williams for The New York Times“Beyond the headlines, this play homes in on the detail, the intense detail of how this foreign policy affects these four people, on this day, in this apartment,” Rafaeli said.Told in real time, the 95-minute play is performed without an intermission. As fear intensifies and violence creeps closer, the four characters fight to keep secrets, and to keep one another alive, but they are also forced to make decisions that could endanger the others.“There’s not really one bad person, and they’re not just in a difficult circumstance; they’re in an impossible circumstance,” said Marjan Neshat, who plays Afiya. The coronavirus pandemic has changed the tone of the play, too. During an earlier run in 2019 at the Williamstown Theater Festival, audiences could only imagine Taroon’s claustrophobia. Now, they can remember. Khoury said she hopes that viewers come away with an understanding of how their individual actions can affect people they will never meet.“As Americans, we used to think it was enough to tend our own gardens,” Khoury said. “Now, I think we’re realizing: It’s not even close to enough.” Khoury wrote “Selling Kabul” while in medical school at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Pulling from conversations with Afghan interpreters, and from her own family history, she weaves a nuanced portrait of the myth of America.“No one that I ever spoke to was ever unclear that they wanted to come to America,” she said. “It was safer for them.”In the play, Afiya’s neighbor Leyla remembers the soldiers as fun, even handsome. Afiya — who speaks English better than Taroon does, despite being forced out of school when the Taliban took control in the 1990s — thinks Americans are untrustworthy. “To me, America is just the great abandoner,” said Neshat, explaining her character’s view. “Like, ‘You promised this thing that you could never fulfill. And, how dare you?’”And for Taroon, America is a promise. “America, their word is good,” he tells Afiya.When “Selling Kabul” was first performed at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Donald Trump was president. That was a laugh line. Now, there aren’t many chuckles, but Taroon’s conviction still stings.“Our word still is not good,” Khoury said. “That’s something that’s difficult to admit on this side of the political spectrum.”Dario Ladani Sanchez, left, as Taroon and Marjan Neshat as Afiya in the play at Playwrights Horizons.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRealizing that her play might leave audience members wondering what they can do to help, Khoury started a private fund-raiser for the International Refugee Assistance Project, which will follow the play as it moves to other cities. Information about the charity is tucked inside each Playbill.“Not giving people somewhere to go after felt like a missed opportunity,” Khoury said.The playwright also held up a moral mirror to audiences in “Power Strip,” a story about Syrian refugees at a migrant camp in Greece, which debuted at Lincoln Center in 2019. In “Selling Kabul,” her characters also stand on the precipice of leaving almost everything they know.“The stories of how we left are the fabric of my childhood, from country to country, in pretty extreme circumstances,” said Khoury, who is of Lebanese and French descent, and whose family has been affected by colonial and imperial shifts across the Middle East and North Africa.“Who are you, before you leave? Who is the person who makes the decision to go?” she said, adding, “And it’s without saying goodbye, in most of the stories I know. It’s immediately. It’s taking the first truck you can.”As audiences filed out of the theater after a recent performance, one friend turned to another. Where do you think they are now? she wondered. What happened to them?For Neshat, who was born in Iran and moved to the United States when she was 8, that’s almost too painful to think about. “How do you choose between your best friend neighbor and your brother?” she said of the play’s excruciating dilemmas. “Like, how do you do that?” More

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    Review: First the Party, Then the Crash, in a ‘Cabaret’ Revival

    A London production starring Eddie Redmayne pulls the audience into a hedonistic milieu. Then things get dark.LONDON — At first glance, it looks as if there’s a party happening at the Kit Kat Club, the refurbished London venue where a nerve-shredding revival of “Cabaret,” starring Eddie Redmayne, opened last weekend.Entering a side door of what was once the Playhouse Theater, you snake your way along corridors not usually open to the public and into a labyrinthine demimonde of dancers and drinks: a recreation of a seedy, Weimar-era Berlin nightclub. The auditorium has lost 200 seats in its transformation into an immersive, plushly appointed space, complete with lamp-lit tables down front for a preshow meal. In the show’s hefty playbill, the brilliant designer Tom Scutt says he has tried to bring a “queer irreverence” to the venue, which rewards close inspection of its details, like a splash of gold here and an art-nouveau flourish there.Yet the director, Rebecca Frecknall, is more interested in disturbing the audience than handing them a drink. Making a remarkable entry into musical theater after lauded productions of Chekhov and Tennessee Williams, Frecknall pulls us into a hedonistic milieu, only to send us out nearly three hours later reminded of life’s horrors.That’s as it should be given this 1966 musical by John Kander (music), Fred Ebb (lyrics) and Joe Masteroff (book) about “the end of the world,” to cite a final observation from Cliff (Omari Douglas), an American writer in 1930s Germany who is alone among the show’s principals in sensing the danger of the Nazis’ rise. Frecknall’s main accomplice in darkening the mood is her Oscar and Tony-winning leading man, Redmayne, returning to the London stage for the first time in a decade. And there’s further assistance from the Irish actress-singer Jessie Buckley, an unusually ferocious Sally Bowles.Redmayne’s Emcee brings his own distinctly shape-shifting, sinuous quality to a role that can be hard to refresh: Many still associate it with a pancake-faced Joel Grey, who originated the part onstage and won an Oscar in the 1972 Bob Fosse film. Limping or crouching his way about the circular stage, a twitchy Redmayne initially calls to mind a demented marionette, his mouth as misshapen as his psyche.He first emerges in a burst of light, his body contorted during the startling opening number, “Willkommen,” a party hat clinging to the side of his tilted head. “Life is beautiful,” he says, but something about the gravelly voice and glazed smile suggest otherwise. Appearing bare-chested soon after in the manic number “Two Ladies,” Redmayne’s Emcee is a devotee of debauchery whose true character is revealed in the antisemitic finish to “If You Could See Her,” when a nasty slur comes as the song’s brutal kicker.A dance number from “Cabaret.”Marc BrennerRedmayne’s lyric tenor lends itself well to “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” the melodic Nazi anthem that sounds sweet enough until you grasp the lyrics. The song prefigures a moral decline that reaches a nadir in the Emcee’s second-act solo, “I Don’t Care Much.” With that number, cut from the original production but reinstated for various revivals, the Emcee’s assimilation into the Third Reich is complete.Frecknall shows that such transformations passed many onlookers by — or that they were reluctant to take action while there was still time. The affair between the landlady Fraulein Schneider (the superb Liza Sadovy, in richly expressive voice) and the Jewish grocer, Herr Schultz (a likable Elliot Levey), is especially telling on this front. Fraulein Schneider sings in the wrenching “What Would You Do?” that she is too old and tired to counter “the storm” she sees approaching; Herr Schultz, meanwhile, is convinced that German citizenship will save him. But when the Emcee raises a champagne flute to the couple, we hear the cacophonous glass-shattering of Kristallnacht.Sally Bowles exists in a self-deluded class of her own: an English expat in Berlin who is heralded as “the toast of Mayfair,” but in Buckley’s take sometimes seems a scared and angry child. She sings “Maybe This Time” directly to Cliff, her lyrics about winning delivered quietly as if Sally were admitting to herself that her life has been a failure. And though she gives off the air of a thumb-sucking Shirley Temple when she first appears with “Don’t Tell Mama,” she roars the title number at the show’s climax full of fury and pain. “The party’s over,” Cliff says: The festivities have become a farewell, and a world is about to crash.CabaretAt the Kit Kat Club in London for an open-ended run; theplayhousetheatre.co.uk. More

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    Terry Gilliam's Disputed Sondheim Show Finds a Home

    The director was set to stage a revival of “Into the Woods” in London. After a clash at the Old Vic theater, the much-anticipated production will now debut 115 miles away, in Bath, England.LONDON — For weeks, a question hung over London theater: What would happen to Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”?On Nov. 1, the Old Vic theater canceled a revival of the musical, co-directed by Terry Gilliam, after a dispute in which the renowned director was accused of endorsing transphobic views and playing down the MeToo movement. That left the production in limbo and London’s theater world wondering if anyone would dare to take it on.Now, there is an answer. On Aug. 19, 2022, Gilliam’s “Into the Woods” will debut at the Theater Royal in Bath, 115 miles from London. The show will run through Sep. 10, 2022, the theater said in a statement.The fuss around the revival — which had received Sondheim’s blessing before his death — began in May, when the Old Vic announced the production as the centerpiece of its new season. That news caused a stir on British social media, because of comments Gilliam had made, in a newspaper interview, about the MeToo movement and so-called cancel culture.In January 2020, Gilliam told The Independent that MeToo “was a witch hunt” and that he was tired of white men “being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world.” Anyway, he added, he now identified as “a Black lesbian in transition.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}According to a report in The Stage, a British theater newspaper, “some within the Old Vic team” felt Gilliam’s comments were “at odds with the theater’s culture and values.”On May 12, Kate Varah, the Old Vic’s executive director, addressed staff concerns at an internal meeting. She said that she had spoken with Gilliam and that the conversation had reassured her that he shared the theater’s values.But the dispute escalated after Gilliam wrote a post on Facebook about “The Closer,” the Dave Chappelle comedy special on Netflix. In the show, the comedian comments mockingly on transgender issues and aligns himself with some feminists who say a transgender woman’s biological sex determines her gender and can’t be changed. Dozens of Netflix employees in Los Angeles staged a walkout over the special, accusing Netflix of endorsing bigotry.“There is a storm brewing over Netflix’s support for the show,” Gilliam wrote on Oct. 14. “I’d love to hear your opinions.”On Nov. 1, the Old Vic and Scenario Two, the musical’s co-producers, announced that they had “mutually agreed to cancel the production,” leading British newspapers to speculate that the Facebook post was the reason behind the decision. The theater and the director both declined to comment for this article. But on Monday, Gilliam said on Facebook that a group of up-and-coming playwrights, directors, costume designers and others at the theater was responsible for the cancellation.The Theater Royal in Bath, England. “Into the Woods” is set to open at the playhouse on Aug. 19, 2022.Nigel Jarvis/ShutterstockGilliam said that members of a short-term artistic development program at the theater, called the Old Vic 12, had “intimidated” the playhouse into canceling the musical after he recommended Chappelle’s special to his Facebook followers.Members of the program were “closed-minded, humor-averse ideologues,” Gilliam said, adding, “Freedom of Speech is often attacked, but I never imagined that Freedom of Recommendation would be under threat as well.”Three members of the Old Vic 12 declined to comment, but one did note that the program had ended several months before the Old Vic reached its decision on “Into the Woods.”In a phone interview, John Berry, a co-founder of Scenario Two, declined to comment on the Old Vic’s decision. His focus was on making an entertaining show, he added. “For me, nothing else matters.”The controversy around “Into the Woods” is not the only recent scandal involving accusations of bigotry in London’s theaters. In November, several prominent Jewish celebrities and journalists accused the Royal Court Theater of perpetuating antisemitic tropes after it staged a new play by the British playwright Al Smith, called “Rare Earth Mettle.” Early performances in the show’s run featured a character called Hershel Fink, a big-nosed, greedy billionaire who seemed to embody negative stereotypes about Jewish people.After a barrage of criticism on social media and in British newspapers, the character’s name was changed. The theater said in a statement that a Jewish theater director had raised concerns about the character in a September workshop: “We acknowledge our wrongdoing and will include antisemitism in future anti-oppression practices and training,” the statement said.Berry declined to comment on whether the two controversies had implications for theater makers, but added, “I have my own views.”He was certain of one thing, though: “There’s certainly not going to be anything controversial” in his production of “Into the Woods.”“It’s going to be vintage Terry Gilliam,” he said. More

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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