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    Nickolas Davatzes, Force Behind A&E and the History Channel, Dies at 79

    He led the cable giant, whose eclectic mix of shows would include collaborations with the BBC and documentary-style series like “Hoarders.”Nickolas Davatzes, who was instrumental in creating the cable television networks A&E and the History Channel, which now reach into 335 million households around the world, died on Aug. 21 at his home in Wilton, Conn. He was 79.The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his son George said.Mr. Davatzes (pronounced dah-VAT-sis) was president and chief executive of A&E, originally the Arts & Entertainment Network, which he ran from 1983 to 2005 as a joint venture of the Hearst Corporation and the Disney-ABC Television Group. He introduced the History Channel in 1995 and remained an aggressive advocate, both within the industry and as a spokesman before Congress, for educational and public affairs programming.By the mid-1980s, A&E had emerged — mostly through buying programming and building a bankable viewer audience by negotiating distribution rights with local cable systems — as the sole surviving advertiser-supported cultural cable service.“After 60 days here, I told my wife I didn’t think this thing had a 20 percent chance, because every time I turned around there was another obstacle,” Mr. Davatzes told The New York Times in 1989. “I used to say that we were like a bumblebee — we weren’t supposed to fly.”But they did. A&E became profitable within three years by offering an eclectic menu of daily programming that, as The Times put it, “might include a biographical portrait of Herbert Hoover, a program about the embattled buffalo, a dramatization of an Ann Beattie short story and a turn from the stand-up comic Buzz Belmondo.”“We don’t want to duplicate ‘The A-Team’ or ‘Laverne & Shirley,’” Mr. Davatzes told The Times in 1985. “There is a younger generation that has never seen any thought-provoking entertainment on television. They’ve seen a rock star destroying a guitar every 16 minutes, but they’ve never seen classical music.“By network standards,” he continued, “our viewership will always be limited. But that is the function of cable — to present enough alternatives so that individuals can be their own programmers.”Under the A&E umbrella, the network encompassed a broad mix of entertainment and nonfiction programming. It created a singular identity with scripted shows (“100 Centre Street,” “A Nero Wolfe Mystery”) and collaborations like its wildly popular co-production with the BBC of “Pride and Prejudice,” a mini-series based on the Jane Austen novel starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth in the mini-series “Pride and Prejudice,” a co-production of A&E and the BBC.Joss Barratt/A&EThe network continued to expand its scope to include documentary series like “Biography”; “Hoarders,” which might be classified as an anthropological study of compulsive stockpiling; and the History Channel’s encyclopedic scrutiny of Adolf Hitler.Mr. Davatzes was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush in 2006. The French government made him a chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1989. He was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 1999.After his death, Frank A. Bennack Jr., the executive vice chairman of Hearst, called him “the father of the History Channel.”Nickolas Davatzes was born on March 14, 1942, in Manhattan to George Davatzes, a Greek immigrant, and Alexandra (Kordes) Davatzes, whose parents were from Greece. Both his parents worked in the fur trade.After graduating from Bryant High School in Astoria, Queens, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1962 and a master’s in sociology in 1964, both from St. John’s University, where he met his future wife, Dorothea Hayes.In addition to his son George, he is survived by his wife; another son, Dr. Nicholas Davatzes; a sister, Carol Davatzes Ferrandino; and four grandchildren. Another son, Christopher, died before him.After serving in the Marines, Mr. Davatzes joined the Xerox Corporation in 1965 and shifted to information technology at Intext Communications Systems in 1978. A friend introduced him to an executive at the fledgling Warner Amex cable company, who recruited him over lunch and had him sign a contract drawn on a restaurant napkin. He went to work there in 1980, alongside cable television pioneers like Richard Aurelio and Larry Wangberg.The Arts & Entertainment Network took shape in 1983, when he helped put the finishing touches on a merger between two struggling cable systems: the Entertainment Network, owned by RCA and the Rockefeller family, and the ARTS Network, owned by Hearst and ABC.His strategy in the beginning was twofold: to focus on making the network more available to viewers, and not to be diverted by producing original programs, instead focusing on acquiring existing ones.“If you’re in programming, we know that 85 percent of every new show that goes on the air usually fails,” said in a 2001 interview with The Cable Center, an educational arm of the cable industry.“Our overall approach is to create a sane economic model,” Mr. Davatzes said in 1985. “I like to tell people working for us that we don’t eat at ‘21.’” More

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    Shooting ‘Scenes From a Marriage’: ‘I Cried Every Day’

    Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac struggled to divorce themselves from their characters in this HBO remake of the Ingmar Bergman series.There were days on the shoot for “Scenes From a Marriage,” a five-episode limited series that premieres Sept. 12 on HBO, when Oscar Isaac resented the crew.The problem wasn’t the crew members themselves, he told me on a video call in March. But the work required of him and his co-star, Jessica Chastain, was so unsparingly intimate — “And difficult!” Chastain added from a neighboring Zoom window — that every time a camera operator or a makeup artist appeared, it felt like an intrusion.On his other projects, Isaac had felt comfortably distant from the characters and their circumstances — interplanetary intrigue, rogue A.I. But “Scenes” surveys monogamy and parenthood, familiar territory. Sometimes Isaac would film a bedtime scene with his onscreen child (Lily Jane) and then go home and tuck his own child into the same model of bed as the one used onset, accessorized with the same bunny lamp, and not know exactly where art ended and life began.“It was just a lot,” he said.Chastain agreed, though she put it more strongly. “I mean, I cried every day for four months,” she said.Isaac, 42, and Chastain, 44, have known each other since their days at the Juilliard School. And they have channeled two decades of friendship, admiration and a shared and obsessional devotion to craft into what Michael Ellenberg, one of the series’s executive producers, called “five hours of naked, raw performance.” (That nudity is metaphorical, mostly.)“For me it definitely felt incredibly personal,” Chastain said on the call in the spring, about a month after filming had ended. “That’s why I don’t know if I have another one like this in me. Yeah, I can’t decide that. I can’t even talk about it without. …” She turned away from the screen. (It was one of several times during the call that I felt as if I were intruding, too.)The original “Scenes From a Marriage,” created by Ingmar Bergman, debuted on Swedish television in 1973. Bergman’s first television series, its six episodes trace the dissolution of a middle-class marriage. Starring Liv Ullmann, Bergman’s ex, it drew on his own past relationships, though not always directly.Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson on the set of the original “Scenes From a Marriage.” Divorce rates in Sweden climbed after it aired.Cinematograph AB/Corbis, via Getty Images“When it comes to Bergman, the relationship between autobiography and fiction is extremely complicated,” said Jan Holmberg, the chief executive of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.A sensation in Sweden, it was seen by most of the adult population. And yes, sure, correlation does not imply causation, but after its debut, Swedish divorce were rumored to have doubled. Holmberg remembers watching a rerun as a 10-year-old.“It was a rude awakening to adult life,” he said.The writer and director Hagai Levi saw it as a teenager, on Israeli public television, during a stint on a kibbutz. “I was shocked,” he said. The series taught him that a television series could be radical, that it could be art. When he created “BeTipul,” the Israeli precursor to “In Treatment,” he used “Scenes” as proof of the concept “that two people can talk for an hour and it can work,” Levi said. (Strangely, “Scenes” also inspired the prime-time soap “Dallas.”)So when Daniel Bergman, Ingmar Bergman’s youngest son, approached Levi about a remake, he was immediately interested.But the project languished, in part because loving a show isn’t reason enough to adapt it. Divorce is common now — in Sweden, and elsewhere — and the relationship politics of the original series, in which the male character deserts his wife and young children for an academic post, haven’t aged particularly well.Then about two years ago, Levi had a revelation. He would swap the gender roles. A woman who leaves her marriage and child in pursuit of freedom (with a very hot Israeli entrepreneur in place of a visiting professorship) might still provoke conversation and interest.So the Marianne and Johan of the original became Mira and Jonathan, with a Boston suburb (re-created in a warehouse just north of New York City), stepping in for the Stockholm of the original. Jonathan remains an academic though Mira, a lawyer in the original, is now a businesswoman who out-earns him.Casting began in early 2020. After Isaac met with Levi, he wrote to Chastain to tell her about the project. She wasn’t available. The producers cast Michelle Williams. But the pandemic reshuffled everyone’s schedules. When production was ready to resume, Williams was no longer free. Chastain was. “That was for me the most amazing miracle,” Levi said.Isaac and Chastain met in the early 2000s at Juilliard. He was in his first year; she, in her third. He first saw her in a scene from a classical tragedy, slapping men in the face as Helen of Troy. He was friendly with her then-boyfriend, and they soon became friends themselves, bonding through the shared trauma of an acting curriculum designed to break its students down and then build them back up again. Isaac remembered her as “a real force of nature and solid, completely solid, with an incredible amount of integrity,” he said.In the next window, Chastain blushed. “He was super talented,” she said. “But talented in a way that wasn’t expected, that’s challenging and pushing against constructs and ideas.” She introduced him to her manager, and they celebrated each other’s early successes and went to each other’s premieres. (A few of those photos are used in “Scenes From a Marriage” as set dressing.)In 2013, Chastain was cast in J.C. Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year,” opposite Javier Bardem. When Bardem dropped out, Chastain campaigned for Isaac to have the role. Weeks before shooting, they began to meet, fleshing out the back story of their characters — a husband and wife trying to corner the heating oil market in 1981 New York — the details of the marriage, business, life.It was their first time working together, and each felt a bond that went deeper than a parallel education and approach. “Something connects us that’s stronger than any ideas of character or story or any of that,” Isaac said. “There’s something else that’s more about like, a shared existence.”Chandor noticed how they would support each other on set, and challenge each other, too, giving each other the freedom to take the characters’ relationship to dark and dangerous places. “They have this innate trust with each other,” Chandor said.That trust eliminated the need for actorly tricks or shortcuts, in part because they know each other’s tricks too well. Their motto, Isaac said, was, “Let’s figure this [expletive] out together and see what’s the most honest thing we can do.”Moni Yakim, Juilliard’s celebrated movement instructor, has followed their careers closely and he noted what he called the “magnetism and spiritual connection” that they suggested onscreen in the film.The actors were unprepared for the emotional intensity of filming the series. “I knew I was in trouble the very first week,” Chastain said.Jojo Whilden/HBO“It’s a kind of chemistry,” Yakim said. “They can read each other’s mind and you as an audience, you can sense it.”Telepathy takes work. When they knew that shooting “Scenes From a Marriage” could begin, Chastain bought a copy of “All About Us,” a guided journal for couples, and filled in her sections in character as Mira. Isaac brought it home and showed it to his wife, the filmmaker Elvira Lind.“She was like, ‘You finally found your match,’” Isaac recalled. “’Someone that is as big of a nerd as you are.’”The actors rehearsed, with Levi and on their own, talking their way through each long scene, helping each other through the anguished parts. When production had to halt for two weeks, they rehearsed then, too.Watching these actors work reminded Amy Herzog, a writer and executive producer on the series, of race horses in full gallop. “These are two people who have so much training and skill,” she said. “Because it’s an athletic feat, what they were being asked to do.”But training and skill and the “All About Us” book hadn’t really prepared them for the emotional impact of actually shooting “Scenes From a Marriage.” Both actors normally compartmentalize when they work, putting up psychic partitions between their roles and themselves. But this time, the partitions weren’t up to code.“I knew I was in trouble the very first week,” Chastain said.She couldn’t hide how the scripts affected her, especially from someone who knows her as well as Isaac does. “I just felt so exposed,” she said. “This to me, more than anything I’ve ever worked on, was definitely the most open I’ve ever been.”“It felt so dangerous,” she said.I visited the set in February (after multiple Covid-19 tests and health screenings) during a final day of filming. It was the quietest set I had ever seen: The atmosphere was subdued, reverent almost, a crew and a studio space stripped down to only what two actors would need to do the most passionate and demanding work of their careers.Isaac didn’t know if he would watch the completed series. “It really is the first time ever, where I’ve done something where I’m totally fine never seeing this thing,” he said. “Because I’ve really lived through it. And in some ways I don’t want whatever they decide to put together to change my experience of it, which was just so intense.”The cameras captured that intensity. Though Chastain isn’t Mira and Isaac isn’t Jonathan, each drew on personal experience — their parents’ marriages, past relationships — in ways they never had. Sometimes work on the show felt like acting, and sometimes the work wasn’t even conscious. There’s a scene in the harrowing fourth episode in which they both lie crumpled on the floor, an identical stress vein bulging in each forehead.“It’s my go-to move, the throbbing forehead vein,” Isaac said on a follow-up video call last month. Chastain riffed on the joke: “That was our third year at Juilliard, the throb.”By then, it had been five months since the shoot wrapped. Life had returned to something like normal. Jokes were possible again. Both of them seemed looser, more relaxed. (Isaac had already poured himself one tequila shot and was ready for another.) No one cried.Chastain had watched the show with her husband. And Isaac, despite his initial reluctance, had watched it, too. It didn’t seem to have changed his experience.“I’ve never done anything like it,” he said. “And I can’t imagine doing anything like it again.” More

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    After ‘Game of Thrones,’ Can TV Get Big Again?

    After “Game of Thrones,” many said the blockbuster series was dead. Maybe not — but the future of TV epics may look more like the movies’ recent past.In spring 2019, as “Game of Thrones” aired its final season, the talk among TV-industry pundits was that the age of dragons was not the only era coming to an end. “Thrones,” the thinking went, might just be the last big TV series ever: That is, the last blockbuster-level behemoth that would dazzle and focus the obsession of a mass audience.I don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but a lot has changed since spring 2019.The pandemic, obviously, bolstered TV’s status as a virtual arena. “Tiger King” was a TV event, and so was “Hamilton” and “Godzilla Vs. Kong.” If theaters’ strength is to bring audiences together, TV’s is to bring audiences together, apart. And as with the shift to working from home, it’s not clear how much of this ground TV will cede back, now that we know how much it’s possible to do without leaving your couch. “Dune,” when it’s released this fall, will be partly a TV event too, via HBO Max, even though theaters have reopened.But if we focus just on the TV part of TV — that is, series made for home-and-device distribution rather than for theaters — the post-“Thrones” question remains: Can any one program, in an age of bingeing, streaming and thousands of choices, bring together a mass audience?This fall and later, several high-profile genre spectacles — from sci-fi to fantasy to dystopian fiction — are betting on yes. On Sept. 24, Apple TV+ premieres “Foundation,” based on the Isaac Asimov novels about the attempt to use “psychohistory” to shape the future of a galactic empire. Earlier this month, FX unveiled the ambitious and long-gestating “Y: The Last Man,” about an apocalypse that kills every human with a Y chromosome save for one.Later in the fall: Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time,” another long-in-the-making epic, based on the sprawling fantasy series by Robert Jordan. Next year: also from Amazon, a series based on one of the few remaining megamythologies not to get a major series adaptation, “The Lord of the Rings”; plus HBO’s “Thrones” prequel, “House of the Dragon,” about Westeros’s messiest platinum blondes, the Targaryen family.From left, Emmy D’Arcy and Matt Smith in HBO’s “Thrones” prequel, “House of the Dragon.” HBO MaxIf the age of blockbuster TV is over, the coming season has not been informed.And there is evidence that event TV is not dead, even if “events” no longer involve us all gathering around our TV sets at 9 p.m. on Sundays. Since the end of “Thrones,” we’ve seen the rise of the next generation of streaming platforms, which provided a direct pipeline from the biggest megatainment companies to the screens in your living room and in your pocket.Disney in particular has driven this change. Its engulfing of the Star Wars and Marvel franchises put two of the movies’ biggest universes into one company, and Disney+ promptly started turning them into TV. It was not long ago that the appearance of a Star Wars or superhero entertainment was a rare treat; now it’s a Wednesday. (Still to come this year: a series built around Star Wars’ Boba Fett and one about the Avengers’ Hawkeye.)The platform showed that, even in the difficult-to-quantify world of streaming, the right TV series can get a mass audience chattering. But Disney+ shows got big by aiming small. That is, they worked best when they fit their big-screen universes into packages that worked for serial TV — intimate, conversational or (relatively) quiet — rather than two hours of movie-house pyrotechnics.Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time” is based on the sprawling fantasy series by Robert Jordan. Amazon StudiosSo “WandaVision” moved a peripheral “Avengers” story line onto a series of classic-TV sets, recreating period sitcoms from half a century to tell a story of grief. (It was less effective, in fact, when it built to an action climax — that is, when it tried to be a Marvel movie.) “The Mandalorian” built on the old-time Western element already present in Star Wars to make a gunslinger-and-sidekick bromance. “Loki” portioned out the superpowered ham of Tom Hiddleston’s film performance in a playful sci-fi story that prioritized talk over effects.Of course, Disney had the advantage of making big TV from already-big intellectual property that it owned. It’s pointless by now to distinguish whether Marvel and Star Wars are movie universes that extend to TV or vice versa; the shows and films are just tributaries in a giant network of content, each promoting the other.The drawback of TV’s new blockbusters, then, may be that they’re doomed to become more like the movies’ blockbusters: dragon-like in scale, mouse-like in creative ambition, at least when it comes to anything that doesn’t involve an established brand. Efforts by other outlets to world-build original genre franchises, like HBO’s labyrinthine steampunk serial “The Nevers,” have been less successful.On the one hand, the fact that the next “The Lord of the Rings” expansion is coming to your living room rather than your local multiplex is a sign of a more TV-centric entertainment future. On the other hand, that future, at least for high-profile TV, may be more and more like the movies’ recent past: big-budget but cautious renderings of stories with built-in followings, endless revisits of corporate properties that you already like.If we’re stuck with old stories expensively retold, the hope is that they at least have something to say to a new moment. From what we know of the new season’s genre epics (most of which, at press time, critics have yet to see), it’s nothing cheerful.Alfred Enoch in “Foundation” on Apple TV+, which is based on the Isaac Asimov novels.Helen Sloan/Apple TV+If there’s a common thread to many of them, it’s world-changing catastrophe. Granted, that’s often a given in high fantasy and sci-fi, but the disasters at the core of these series — the revenge of nature, self-destruction through hubris — could speak loudly now (if you can hear them over the extreme weather alerts).Even the series that aren’t prequels are often preludes to a fall. “The Lord of the Rings” movies, for instance, arrived through an accident of timing as a kind of rallying call after the 9/11 attacks. The new series takes place thousands of years before the events of the films, in Middle-earth’s Second Age — which, if you know your Tolkien, ended with the fabled kingdom of Númenor being swallowed by the sea in a cataclysm it brought on itself.Likewise, “Foundation,” telling the story of a pending man-made disaster that cannot be stopped, only mitigated, could have a lot to say to a society that has been through and is looking ahead to [gestures at everything]. We have a doomed royal house in “Dragon”; in “Y,” a pandemic story that combines apocalyptic political intrigue with a more sex- and gender-conscious version of “The Walking Dead.”And “The Wheel of Time,” already renewed for a second season before its first has appeared, is built on a mythology that involves a repeating cycle of renewal and destruction. That theme may mirror not just an anxious world, but the rise and fall of media trends that produced this series and its peers.The epic TV event, that most elusive and awe-inspiring of fabulous beasts, may well have been pronounced dead. But that doesn’t mean it can’t rise again — even if it’s in a too-familiar form. More

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    ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 2, Episode 8 Recap: Fathers and Sons

    Also: Where are Rebecca and Sam headed? And how should we feel about it?Season 2, Episode 8, ‘Man City’“Fathers and sons, so tricky,” Higgins tells Jamie, before continuing on with an irony the latter doesn’t catch: “They should really write songs about it.”Indeed! Also, perhaps, television shows?Here we are, at last, with the revelation about Ted that we have been waiting for: His father killed himself when Ted was 16 years old. We don’t yet know anything much beyond that.We’ve been building toward this moment all season. Episode 2 had so many references to fathers and sons (remember “The Prince of Tides”?) that some astute readers guessed this was where the show was headed all the way back then.Sure, we’ve had our distractions along the way, some of them marvelous — Roy doing his “Sleepless in Seattle” crosstown sprint; Roy and Phoebe doing their “Love Actually” door-to-door search for a dentist; Roy doing pretty much anything else.But the theme of fathers has been lurking beneath the show’s typical good cheer for a while now: Jamie’s dad. Nate’s dad. Sam’s dad (though in a quite different way). Even Rebecca’s dad, whom we did not actually meet, but who sounds like no Prince Charming.But let’s start from the beginning. On the phone with her own therapist, Sharon is offended at the idea that she’s behaving like Ted: “Me and Ted Lasso are nothing alike,” she complains. This feels like a deliberate inversion of last week, when Sharon was explaining to a reluctant Ted that their two jobs are actually quite similar.And then: blammo. Riding her bike to work as usual, Sharon is hit by a car. As the actress who plays Sharon, Sarah Niles, explained to me in an interview at the beginning of the season, one of her challenges was that when she got the role she didn’t yet know how to ride a bike. So, with the help of friends, she learned. And how do the writers reward her? They have her character run over by a car! Cruel? Ironic? You be the judge.Fortunately, the damage is not too extreme: a concussion, some stitches, and a brief period of confusion during which Sharon sent Ted some 32 voice messages, including one in which she sang the first act of “West Side Story.”But later on the phone, Sharon is serious: “I was scared today. Really scared.” Brushing away Ted’s usual chirpy banter, she tells him, “I don’t need a pep talk. Ted, I just wanted to tell you how I was feeling … And I’m glad I did.” Sharon can’t know it yet, but this is the moment of total honesty that Ted will later reciprocate.Stuck somewhere in there — fathers and sons! — is another call to Sam from his lovely father. Cerithium Oil (a fictionalized stand-in for Shell) is being forced to stop work in Nigeria, thanks to Sam’s taking a stand in Episode 3! Sam’s father congratulates Sam; Sam congratulates his father for inspiring him; Sam’s father congratulates Sam for rightly giving him credit.It honestly seems as though the two men might keep lobbing congratulations back and forth indefinitely. It’s an international call, though, so eventually they stop. But if Sam’s dad is supposed to be the show’s standard for good male parenting, well of course everyone else is going to come up short.Everyone, that is, except Roy Kent, who is effectively the surrogate dad to his niece, Phoebe. (Her biological father, like so many others on the show, is evidently not a good one.) Roy is called in for a meeting with Phoebe’s teacher, at which she informs him that Phoebe “has been swearing, a lot,” followed by an example too extravagantly obscene ever to be printed in this newspaper.The ensuing pantomime between the teacher and Roy — in which she tries to convey that Roy’s fondness for language as salty as the Dead Sea could be contributing to Phoebe’s overdeveloped vocabulary, and Roy only gradually comprehends the accusation — was one of my favorite moments of the episode.Roy and Phoebe’s later conversation in the car is a good one, too, with him explaining that people expect pro athletes like himself to curse all the time, but it is unacceptable in anyone who seeks to be a “veterinarian for wild animals.” I loved the closing of the scene, too, in which Roy agrees to play one game of “Princess and Dragon” with Phoebe, and then asks, a perfect beat later, “Can I be the dragon this time?”Sarah Niles learned how to ride a bicycle for “Ted Lasso.” And this is how the show repays her?Apple TV+And then, we go from good parenting to bad parenting, possibly the worst parenting. James Tartt, the execrable father of Jamie, is back on the scene for the two things he seems to do best: cadging free tickets to a big game, and berating/bullying/humiliating his son for — well, it hardly seems to matter what.The game in question is a semifinal of the FA Cup to be held in revered Wembley Stadium. (I enjoyed Ted’s confusion about the fact that professional soccer fields are not all the same size, and that the Wembley where he long ago saw Queen perform on TV was the “old Wembley,” not “this” Wembley.)The game is against the powerhouse Manchester City, the same team that knocked AFC Richmond into relegation 11 months ago. The outcome is a brutal, 5-0 blowout by Man City (even if, because of some error, we still see the scoreboard registering “4-0”).Cue Tartt the Elder, a rabid Man City fan, who barges into the AFC Richmond locker room to gloat and belittle as only a thug with too much drink in him can. This leads to two extraordinary moments.First, Jamie’s dad receives one of the most well-earned punches in television history, courtesy of his son, before Coach Beard escorts him out roughly.And then, after a stretch of silence so long and painful it feels like it may never end, Roy hugs Jamie, gently at first but with growing ferocity. In spite of himself, and in spite of their long history of enmity, Roy, in this one moment, is being precisely the father figure Jamie needs.First, Phoebe. Now, Jamie. By the start of Season 3, Roy Kent may be a surrogate father to all of us.And then, Ted’s anguished admission to Sharon about his own father’s suicide. I don’t think there’s a lot more to be said about this yet, though I’m sure there will be plenty to say in the future.So keeping in mind that this recap is running long — the episode itself was, at 45 minutes, the longest of the season so far — I’ll move on to the other principal story line.Though we learned about it two episodes ago, Rebecca and Sam have only now discovered that the Bantr flirtations they have been conducting are in fact with one another. Rebecca is understandably perturbed, especially when she learns Sam is just 21. (“All these messages, I was grooming you.”) But Sam takes it in stride.He pushes forward romantically — though gently, this is Sam we’re talking about — and she pushes back: about dinner (eventually, a yes), about a kiss (they share one), and about whether she will invite him in (a solid no). “I mean it,” she tells Sam. “I have to mean it.”This seems to me a perfect way to end the story line. An anonymous flirtation, a comic recognition at the restaurant, an enjoyable dinner, and a single kiss — all happy semi-romantic memories, but none that involve launching an improbable-bordering-on-impossible (and some would argue inappropriate) relationship.But one thing Hollywood has true difficulty comprehending is that a romantic relationship — even a genuine love affair — can go unconsummated, but still be worthwhile and moving. This was, I think, the central insight of “Once.”Is it wistful and bittersweet that the stars of the film, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, don’t end up together? Of course. But it’s not a tragedy. Just a road not taken, and for very compelling reasons. (The real-life romance between the stars, who by contrast did consummate their relationship, seems sadder to me than their onscreen one.)I wish this had been how the Rebecca-Sam quasi-romance had played out: in mutual recognition that there was a spark, but also that there were excellent reasons not to pursue it.But no. As usual in Hollywood — even “Ted Lasso”!—a relationship in which those involved don’t fall into the sack, preferably quickly, is hardly considered a relationship at all.So Rebecca, changing her mind after watching Sam interviewed on television, sends him a text. He texts back his address. But when she comes out her front door moments later, he’s already standing there!I mean, isn’t this a tad stalker-y? He didn’t know she was going to text him; in fact she had made exceptionally, repeatedly clear that she didn’t want to date him. So why’s he standing on her doorstep at night, not merely uninvited but specifically told to stay away?I mean, all he’s missing are the creepy, “Love Actually” poster boards. But perhaps there were no more left in London after Roy bought them up in Episode 4.Sam’s line that he gave Rebecca his address for “next time” also seems a bit presumptive/possessive/premature. What if she only wanted to do it once, if at all? And wanted it to be at his place, not hers, as suggested by her note? (She could have invited him over. She didn’t.)I’m sure there will be a variety of strong opinions about the Rebecca-Sam connection. And I think everyone — myself included! — should wait to see how it proceeds before coming to firm conclusions. But it may be that I exaggerated (ever so slightly?) the degree to which Sam’s father raised him to be a gentleman.Brett Goldstein and Elodie Blomfield in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+Odds and EndsNate’s ongoing decline seems to have slowed, at least for the moment and at least relative to his extraordinary abuse of Colin and Will last week. But it’s clear that space has been developing between him and the other coaches. He repeatedly seems like the odd man out, whether it’s his enthusiasm to be a spokesman (in polar contrast to Roy and Beard) or his having to be lectured that other people’s life emergencies are not necessarily his business. Things aren’t as bad as they’ve been, but I’m pretty sure they will get worse again. (If you haven’t already, read this intriguing interview.)As Isaac gives Sam a haircut, the first act is set to Arturo Sandoval’s “La Virgen de la Macarena,” and the second to Mahalia Jackson’s “Down by the Riverside.” This kind of highly produced musical number, which I can’t recall seeing in the first season, has been a staple this season. (Success has its advantages.) My favorite example remains “She’s a Rainbow” from Episode 5.Doesn’t Colin ever catch a break? For two weeks, he was subjected to a torrent of abuse from Nate. Tonight, he almost asphyxiates. Why? Because Isaac, pondering whether to cut Sam’s hair, forgets to lift the barbell off his throat.“Ain’t no policy like a hospital policy, ’cause a hospital policy don’t stop” — Ted at his best/worst (but mostly best). If, like me, you were trying to remember the original line and where it came from, you’re in luck. This piece, which contains a hilarious number of variations on the theme over the years, will answer all your questions.Pop culture references tonight included Kyrie Irving, Liev Schreiber, and “Sling Blade” — though I strongly suspect there are others that I missed. Let me know in comments. Thanks to the several folks who confirmed that, yes, Holiday Inn does have a big U.K. presence.Thanks, too, to everyone who pointed out an oversight on my part last week that has smitten me to the core: the “Groundhog Day” reference implicit in any use of “I Got You, Babe.” No apology is sufficient, but I can offer in reparation this marvelous piece on the film by my friend James Parker.A quick personal anecdote related to this week’s Roy-Phoebe story line. Years ago, before I had children, I too had a spicy vocabulary. At one point, I was on a profane diatribe about something with my boss, who was a little older and already had kids. His eyes grew wide, and he pointed at me. He said, with a tone of revelation, “It’s you. It’s all you.”It turned out he had been swearing more in front of his children, and his wife had pointed it out. And he believed — and I have no reason to doubt — he was swearing more because he spent hours a day in the presence of my colorful verbiage. So be forewarned: You should not only be careful with your words around kids but, at least sometimes, around their parents, too. Swearing is apparently infectious, and you never know what vectors your potty-mouth might travel. More

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    Jimmy Kimmel: Herd Immunity Doesn’t Mean Taking Horse Medicine

    “Vaxxed and waxed. He wants his mailmen smooth,” Kimmel joked of President Biden’s new vaccine requirements for federal employees on Thursday.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘The Variants Are Coming!’On Thursday, President Biden announced new vaccine requirements for federal employees and contractors, health care workers and those working at companies with more than 100 employees.“And, of course, a lot of people are upset about this,” Jimmy Kimmel said. “They don’t want to be told what to do — not even by the doctors who they will eventually rush to to beg for help when they get sick.”“Vaxxed and waxed. He wants his mailmen smooth.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This really does feel like when your dad stops threatening and actually does turn the car around.” — JAMES CORDEN“But you know, there’s a reason pandemic movies end when the hero finds the cure for the disease. There’s no ‘Contagion’ sequel with Matt Damon running around trying to convince everyone to take the vaccine — they just take the vaccine. And thank God, by the way — he sucks. We don’t need more movies with him.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Vaccine mandates have a proud history in this country. During a smallpox outbreak in 1777, George Washington required his troops to be immunized. And who can forget the immortal words of Paul Revere: ‘One if by J.&J., two if by Pfizer. The variants are coming! The variants are coming!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But, still, I don’t know, like a quarter of the country thinks herd immunity means they should be taking livestock medicine instead of the vaccination.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Biden said it’s time to stop horsing around — and then he was like, ‘No, seriously, stop taking horse medicine.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (She’s Back Edition)“The Biden administration yesterday removed 18 military academy board members that were appointed by Trump, including haunted Dollar Store Barbie doll Kellyanne Conway. Which, there’s a name I haven’t said in a while: Kellyanne Conway. I’m not gonna say it any more times. I’ve seen ‘Candyman.’ I know what might happen.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Why were there still any Trump holdovers anyway? That’s like moving into a rent-controlled apartment the last guy died in and keeping all the expired whitefish in the refrigerator.” — SETH MEYERS“And why was Kellyanne Conway on an Air Force advisory board? If she ever flew an F-16 or what she probably calls an F-17, I guess we would end up in a ravine, her standing on a tarmac in a parachute claiming it was a successful landing.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingStephen Colbert spoke with Steve Burns from “Blues Clues,” who went viral this week with a heartfelt video that addressed his abrupt departure from the beloved children’s show close to 20 years ago.Also, Check This OutSeth Meyers was among Kelly Clarkson’s guests during a string of New York episodes taped at Jazz at Lincoln Center.Weiss Eubanks/NBCAfter two years of her daytime show, much of that during a pandemic, Kelly Clarkson has hit her stride as a talk show host. More

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    Elizabeth McCann, 90, Dies; Broadway Producer With a Formidable Track Record

    In a career that began in 1976, she won nine Tony Awards and helped bring “Equus,” “Amadeus” and the work of Edward Albee to the New York stage.The veteran Broadway producer Elizabeth McCann with Jed Bernstein, president of the League of American Theaters and Producers, in 2001.Gabe Palacio/Getty ImagesElizabeth McCann, a theater producer known for what one journalist called her “steel and wit” who in a dizzying four-decade career won nine Tony Awards, many of them as half of McCann & Nugent Productions, and gave New York audiences more than 60 Broadway productions, including such hits as “Equus,” “Amadeus” and “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” died on Wednesday in the Bronx. She was 90.Her death, in a hospital, was announced by her longtime associate and friend Kristen Luciani, who said Ms. McCann had cancer.McCann & Nugent, which Ms. McCann formed in 1976 with Nelle Nugent, had a remarkable five-year winning streak, taking the Tony for either best play or best revival every year from 1978 to 1982. The first was for “Dracula,” a sexy variation on the classic vampire story; the rest were for dramas or satires.These included “The Elephant Man” (1979), the story of a physically disfigured man in Victorian England; “Amadeus” (1981), about the composer Antonio Salieri’s bitter musical rivalry with Mozart in 18th-century Vienna; and “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby” (1982), an eight-and-a-half-hour adaptation, imported from London, of Charles Dickens’s 19th-century social satire.After her partnership with Ms. Nugent ended in the mid-1980s, Ms. McCann won four more Tonys: best revival for productions of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge” (1998) and “Hair” (2009), one of the few musicals she produced, and best play for Michael Frayn’s “Copenhagen” (2000) and Edward Albee’s “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” (2002).Her producing relationship with Mr. Albee also included Off Broadway productions of “Three Tall Women,” “Painting Churches” and “The Play About the Baby.”“Getting ahead in business means having an ability to compromise your conscience, and you get better at it the older you get,” Ms. McCann told the business newspaper Crain’s, at least partly tongue in cheek, in 2007. At the same time, she said in several interviews, she still felt a childlike thrill in being able to walk into theaters without a ticket.Ms. McCann was honored by the Tony Awards as part of a “60 Years of Excellence” celebration in 2006. She won nine Tonys in her career, many of them as half of McCann & Nugent Productions.G. Gershoff/WireImageElizabeth Ireland McCann was born on March 29, 1931, in Manhattan, the only child of Patrick and Rebecca (Henry) McCann. Her father was a subway motorman, her mother a homemaker. Both her parents were born in Scotland.Though the McCanns lived in Midtown Manhattan — Elizabeth recalled roller-skating throughout the garment district as a child — they were not a theatergoing family. Elizabeth was 14 when she saw her first Broadway show, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring José Ferrer; she went only because a cousin from New Jersey had an extra ticket and her mother insisted that she go. Luckily and fatefully, she said decades later, the play, for which Mr. Ferrer won a Tony, “blew me away.”Giving some thought to teaching drama, she graduated from Manhattanville College in 1952 and earned a master’s degree in English literature from Columbia University two years later. She worked in theater for about 10 years, beginning as an unpaid intern for Proscenium Productions, a company based at the Cherry Lane Theater in Lower Manhattan. (“Eventually they paid me $25 a week,” she recalled.) Frustrated with her lack of advancement, she decided that practicing theatrical law might be a way to go.“By the time I got out of law school, I was 35,” she recalled in 2002 in a CUNY-TV interview. After receiving her law degree from Fordham University in 1966 and passing the New York bar, she briefly worked for a Manhattan law firm and took some jobs in theater management.Her big break was not a legal job: In 1967, she was hired by James Nederlander as managing director of the Nederlander Organization. Ms. Nugent was a co-worker there.After teaming up to found their own firm, Ms. McCann and Ms. Nugent became general managers of six productions in their first two years together, including the original Broadway staging of “The Gin Game.” They then tried their hand at producing.Ms. McCann with, from left, the television journalist Pia Lindstrom, former Mayor David N. Dinkins and Woodie King Jr., the founding director of the New Federal Theater, at a benefit for the theater in New York in 2011.Walter McBride/Corbis via Getty ImagesTheir first show, “Dracula” (1977), starring Frank Langella, ran two and a half years and won two Tonys, one for costume design and one for best revival. (The category was called “most innovative revival” that year.) Ms. McCann considered it a sign of good luck when she learned that her mother, who had immigrated from Glasgow in her youth, had sailed on the passenger liner Transylvania.Another notable Broadway hit was “Morning’s at Seven” (1981), about four elderly sisters in the Midwest. Though seemingly bucolic, the production had its dark side. As Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times, the play might have looked like a Norman Rockwell painting, but its soul was Edward Hopper’s.When Ms. McCann and Ms. Nugent began their business, they were casually referred to in the industry as “the girls.” After their successes started rolling in, that changed to “the ladies.” But Ms. McCann saw gender as just one facet of a complicated picture.“Sure, we’re women. But you could look at it another way,” she said in an interview with The Times in 1981. “Most of the men in the theater business are Jewish, and I’m Irish Catholic. You could say, ‘How the hell did an Irish Catholic — or a New Jersey Protestant like Nelle — ever get in?’”In an industry “desperate for success and product and ideas,” she concluded, “I don’t think anybody cares as much where those things come from as they think they care.”There were bumps along the way. Investors sued Ms. McCann and Ms. Nugent for fraud after their 1985 show “Leader of the Pack” failed to recoup its investment (the fate of some 80 percent of Broadway productions). A federal jury found the producers not guilty, and a relieved Ms. McCann told the news media afterward: “Nobody’s out to cheat investors. God knows it’s hard enough to find them.”After the partners went their own ways — Ms. Nugent pursued a solo career as well and went on to produce many shows on Broadway — they had a brief reunion in 2002, jointly producing the dark comedy “The Smell of the Kill” at the Helen Hayes Theater. It was not a success and closed after 60 performances.In the early 2000s, Ms. McCann also produced six Tony Awards telecasts, three of which won Emmys.She never married and leaves no immediate survivors.Her last producing credit was Martin McDonagh’s “Hangmen,” which had been scheduled to open on Broadway on March 19, 2020, but closed after 13 previews, along with every other Broadway production, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.Ms. McCann’s producing philosophy was simple. “Producing is really about insisting that everybody pay attention to detail,” she told The Times in 1981. “The Titanic probably sank because nobody ordered binoculars for the crow’s nest.” More

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    Michael Constantine, Father in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding,’ Dies at 94

    He won an Emmy for his role on the TV series “Room 222” and played other many characters over the years before becoming known as the hit film’s patriarch.Michael Constantine, an Emmy-winning character actor known as the genially dyspeptic school principal on the popular TV series “Room 222” and, 30 years later, as the genially dyspeptic patriarch in the hit film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” died on Aug. 31 at his home in Reading, Pa. He was 94.His agent, Julia Buchwald, confirmed the death.Mr. Constantine, who began his career on the Broadway stage, was endowed with fierce eyebrows, a personal warmth that belied his perennial hangdog look, and the command of a Babel of foreign accents. Of Greek extraction, he was routinely cast by Hollywood to portray a welter of ethnicities.He played several Jewish characters, winning an Emmy in 1970 for the role of Seymour Kaufman, who presided with grumpy humanity over a fictional Los Angeles school on “Room 222.” Broadcast on ABC from 1969 to 1974, the show centered on an idealistic Black history teacher, played by Lloyd Haynes, who contended with a variety of issues, social and otherwise, at the racially diverse Walt Whitman High School.He also played Italians, on shows including “The Untouchables” and “Kojak”; Russians, as in the 1980s series “Airwolf”; a Gypsy, in the 1996 horror film “Thinner,” adapted from a Stephen King novel; and, on occasion, even a Greek or two.Mr. Constantine was possessed of a gravitas that often led to him being cast as lawyers or heavies. He played the title role, the night-court judge Matthew Sirota, on “Sirota’s Court,” a short-lived sitcom shown on NBC in the 1976-77 season.Mr. Constantine with Lloyd Haynes in the TV series “Room 222,” seen on ABC from 1969 to 1974. He won an Emmy for his portrayal of a principal who presided over a high school with grumpy humanity.ABCHe had guest roles on scores of other shows, including “Naked City,” “Perry Mason,” “Ironside,” “Gunsmoke” and “Hey, Landlord” in the 1960s, and “Remington Steele,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Law & Order” in the ’80s and ’90s.On film, he appeared in “The Last Mile” (1959), a prison picture starring Mickey Rooney; “The Hustler” (1961), starring Paul Newman; the 1969 comedies “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium” and “Don’t Drink the Water”; and “Voyage of the Damned” (1976).Mr. Constantine became known to an even wider, younger audience as Gus Portokalos, the combustible, tradition-bound father whose daughter is engaged to a patrician white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, in the hit 2002 comedy “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”An immigrant who made good as the owner of a Chicago diner, Gus is an ardent amateur etymologist who can trace any word to its putative Greek origin. (“Kimono,” he concludes after pondering the matter, surely comes from “cheimónas” — Greek for winter, since, he explains in his heavily accented English: “What do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe!”)Gus is also a fervent believer in the restorative power of Windex, applied directly to the skin, to heal a panoply of ailments, including rashes and boils.“He’s a man from a certain kind of background,” Mr. Constantine said of his character in a 2003 interview with The Indianapolis Star. “His saving grace is that he truly does love his daughter and want the best for her. He may not go about it in a very tactful way. So many people tell me, ‘My dad was just like that.’ And I thought, ‘And you don’t hate him?’”“My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which was written by its star, Nia Vardalos, and also starred Lainie Kazan as Gus’s wife and John Corbett as the man she marries, was a surprise international hit. It took in more than $360 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing romantic comedies of all time.Mr. Constantine reprised the role on television in “My Big Fat Greek Life,” a sitcom that appeared briefly on CBS in 2003, and on the big screen in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” in 2016.The son of Andromache (Fotiadou) and Theoharis Ioannides Efstratiou, Mr. Constantine was born in Reading on May 22, 1927. His parents were Greek immigrants, and his father was a steelworker.He settled on an acting career early, an idea reinforced after a youthful visit to a friend who was studying acting in New York.“I just knew I belonged there,” Mr. Constantine told Odyssey, an English-language magazine about Greek life, in 2011. “They could make fun of this hick from Pennsylvania, but I just belong here — this is me.”The young Mr. Constantine studied acting with Howard da Silva while supporting himself with odd jobs, among them night watchman and shooting-gallery barker. He became an understudy to Paul Muni in the role of the character modeled on the famed defense lawyer Clarence Darrow in “Inherit the Wind,” which opened on Broadway in 1955.In “Compulsion” — a 1957 Broadway dramatization of Meyer Levin’s novel about the Leopold and Loeb murder case — Mr. Constantine took over the role of another defense lawyer from Frank Conroy just before opening night. (Mr. Conroy withdrew after suffering a heart attack during previews.)“Michael Constantine gives an excellent performance,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times. “He avoids the sentimentality that the situations might easily evoke and plays with taste, deliberation, color and intelligence.”Mr. Constantine’s other Broadway credits include Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, in the original cast of “The Miracle Worker” (1959), and Dogsborough in Bertolt Brecht’s antifascist satire “Arturo Ui” (1963).Mr. Constantine’s first marriage, to the actress Julianna McCarthy, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Kathleen Christopher. His survivors include two sisters, Patricia Gordon and Chris Dobbs. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.For all Mr. Constantine’s credits, for all his critical acclaim, it was for a single role — and for a single prop wielded in the course of that role — that he seems destined to be remembered.“I can’t tell you,” he said in a 2014 interview with his hometown paper, The Reading Eagle, “how many times I’ve autographed a Windex bottle.”Alyssa Lukpat More

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    How a TV Ad Enticed Broadway Crowds Right After 9/11

    Rudy Giuliani was meant to appear; Elaine Stritch arrived just in time. Recalling the “I Love New York” spot that helped dispel the fear in Times Square.Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Broadway suspended performances for just two days, reopening on Sept. 13, 2001. But audiences were hesitant to return, and many shows performed to near-empty houses for weeks.To encourage attendance, the theater’s brightest stars — many in costume — gathered in a mostly deserted Times Square on Sept. 28 to perform the John Kander and Fred Ebb song “New York, New York.” (A studio recording session was held the day before to capture audio).Book ended by two of Broadway’s best-known voices, Bernadette Peters and Nathan Lane, the performance had the Phantom rubbing shoulders with the Beast, while “Lion King” puppets bobbed overhead. Brian Stokes Mitchell and Brooke Shields were there; so were the preteen urchins from “Les Miserables.”The footage was used for a 30-second commercial that ran on major television networks, as well as in movie theaters across the country. The goal of the ad, according to its director, Glenn Weiss: “I want people to not be afraid to come and see a show.”The week of the attacks, Broadway altogether grossed an anemic $185,490. After the commercial’s release, ticket sales steadily increased, and for the week of Nov. 11, shows brought in $470,845.Twenty years later, as Broadway braces for another nervous reopening, there are striking parallels to that morning in late September. Indeed, on Aug. 30, the industry set in motion its own post-pandemic marketing campaign, including a clip-filled video entitled “This is Broadway,” narrated by Oprah Winfrey.Here, those who were in front of the camera and behind the scenes for the 2001 ad reflect on the experience. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.JAN SVENDSEN FRIEDLANDER, then-marketing director of the Broadway League On the 12th, I did go to work. I went to the League offices and all these members — producers and theater owners and general managers — started coming. No one knew what to do. And then midday, the mayor’s office called and they said, “You’ve got to get Broadway reopened.” So we agreed to reopen on Thursday the 13th.Jan Svendsen Friedlander, the former marketing director of the Broadway League, with a poster signed by many of the participants in the Broadway-boosting 2001 commercial.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesRozette Rago for The New York TimesNATHAN LANE, performer Everybody was shaken by what happened. And people were concerned it might happen again. “The Producers” had opened and played through summer and then it was the fall. We went back on a Thursday, all because of [then Mayor] Rudy Giuliani — this is before he was a raging [expletive]. It felt wrong to be going back so quickly. And yet we were trying to do something positive.DREW HODGES, founder, SpotCo advertising agency Something like five days later we were back in the office and trying to figure out what to do. We had this idea of doing a TV commercial, getting everybody into Times Square. Barry Weissler, the “Chicago” producer, he was a friend. We went to him and said, “We have this idea, help us rock and roll it forward and get it to more powerful people.” And I believe he said, “I was thinking the same thing.”BARRY WEISSLER, producer We knew we wanted to sing “New York, New York.” What else? It was an idea that grew out of my meeting with Jed [Bernstein, former Broadway League president], saying we should bring the entire Broadway community together in one place to celebrate humanity — the tragedy aside, 9/11 aside. Let’s celebrate Broadway, humanity and life.BERNADETTE PETERS, performer Of course, New York was afraid. We were concerned: Is it going to happen again? But we just had to be brave and let people know that it was time to take back New York.JERRY MITCHELL, choreographer Drew Hodges called me and said, “We’re getting ready to do a commercial. We’re filming in Times Square. I’m going to get all the actors before their matinee. Will you choreograph it?” I said, “Absolutely, what do you need?” He sent me the song, and I had 12 dancers, I think, with me. I choreographed a little something for them that night. And the next morning, we met at the Booth Theater [functioning as a green room]. I went onstage, and there was the Broadway community, in costume, sitting in the audience.CHRIS BONEAU, publicist [Producers] were told, “We need two people to do this, and it has to be Nathan and Matthew [Broderick].” Or: “It can be three costumed characters, and these are the ones who we would like to get.” You got to hand it to the people who wrangled the whole thing. I mean, there were so many people behind the scenes who were doing every single thing they could to get this moment right, because you only had one shot at it.HODGES We were standing in Shubert Alley, waiting to go into the Booth while the shows filed in. And we heard this jangling sound, and we couldn’t figure out what it was. And it got louder and louder. And then around the corner came all the Rockettes. And they were in costume, in formation in one line, tap dancing, literally, across an empty Times Square.Faces in the crowd, from left: Tony Roberts, Peters, Betty Buckley, Joel Grey, Dick Cavett, Stritch and Cady Huffman.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJOEL GREY, performer Everybody you ever knew in the theater all of a sudden was there, shiny and bright and ready to take on the world. Theater people believe in dreams, so we were all dreamers saying, “Everything is going to be all right.” We all needed to tell a story.MITCHELL I was standing onstage [at the Booth] and said, “This is the choreography; everybody stand up.” I think I played the tape three times. And then as each group went to their place, I put an assistant with them. They took them out to the platform and started reviewing it. Then I went out front, and I climbed the George M. [Cohan] statue, and I was standing on the statue yelling at everybody over a megaphone.PETER GALLAGHER, performer I remember Jerry, he couldn’t have been a more embracing and vibrant life spirit. And, frankly, it was just really reassuring to see everybody — just to see a lot of people you had known or worked with.HODGES The last line is, and Nathan says it in the spot, “Come to New York and let’s go on with the show.” But it was supposed to be Giuliani.FRIEDLANDER We kept hearing, “He’s coming, he’s coming. Don’t let anybody go, he wants to be in it.” So while we were waiting, a lot of the restaurants in Times Square came running out, and they were handing [out] cases of water and croissants and pastries and sandwiches and drinks.GLENN WEISS, director Fire trucks were heading right past us. And literally every cast from every Broadway show stopped, turned and applauded. The people who get applause were giving applause, and it was for our first responders. That vision will stick with me forever.PETERS We had our passion and our power and our love for New York and what it represents. Everyone was there. Of course Elaine Stritch, my dear friend, she just made it at the last minute, because she always would run just a little late.HARVEY FIERSTEIN, performer We were told to wear anything we wanted except white. That was emphasized a bunch of times. So we were ready to shoot and a cab pulls up through the police line and out steps Stritch, all in white. And then of course, everybody’s already in place, so the only place she can possibly stand is dead center — in white.LANE She thought, I think because of the success of “The Producers,” I would be in the front row and that if she stood next to me, she would definitely be on camera. She said, “Oh, no, no, no, I’ll be right here next to Nathan.” That I remember was very amusing. And very typical of her.Nathan Lane recalled how Elaine Stritch jostled for a prime position at the shoot.Jesse Dittmar for The New York TimesWEISSLER A few performers, when we placed them, insisted on pushing through to the front. I’m not going to name names. So take a look at who’s in front. She was a dear friend.HODGES We had to plan where everybody stood, and it was a grid of 40 shows. So people like Susan Lucci and Alan Alda [both had previously been on Broadway] were in the front, as they did not have a show to stand with. And of course, they were recognizable.FRIEDLANDER The concept was always to start really small with Bernadette. Bernadette symbolizes Broadway. And then the idea was just to go wider and wider and wider, so that you see Times Square, and you see that there was life there.PETERS Although I started it and I’m the first voice, it’s all of us. That’s what was important. The feeling of the love between us made us all stronger.HODGES Every single person did it for not a penny, which is kind of miraculous.FRIEDLANDER Seth Popper [the League’s director of labor relations] was my counterpart; he managed to get all the unions to give us concessions, so that we could actually shoot this spot. In the real world, if we had tried to pay for that spot, it would have been millions of dollars.GREY It was impossible to not want to be a part of it, to be somehow part of the solution. God, who would believe that there even was a solution?GALLAGHER Fortunately, none of us are accustomed to certainty in any aspect of our lives. And so it’s the kind of pluck: We don’t stop performing in a show just because it doesn’t work, or it’s going to close. You don’t stop because there’s a threat. You just keep going. More