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    The Original ‘Real World’ Cast Reunites, Older but Still Not Polite

    A new Paramount+ series reunites the first cast of the pioneering reality show in the same loft they shared nearly 30 years ago.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe Original ‘Real World’ Cast Reunites, Older but Still Not Polite“The Real World Homecoming: New York” brings back the housemates from the inaugural season of the MTV series that set the standards of reality television, for better and for worse.A new Paramount+ series reunites the first cast of the pioneering reality show in the same loft they shared nearly 30 years ago.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 26, 2021Updated 3:04 p.m. ETLate last year, Julie Gentry was in Atlanta helping her 19-year-old son, Noah, move into a house where he and four of his college classmates planned to live together while the pandemic kept them off-campus.At one point, Gentry said her son took the opportunity to tease her about the long-ago role she played in television history. “He was laughing that I was setting him up for his ‘Real World’ experience,” she said.It was only minutes later that Gentry got a text message from Bunim/Murray Productions, the company that created “The Real World” for MTV and which cast her in the debut season of that groundbreaking series. The company was inviting her to return to the same SoHo loft where she’d lived with six other aspiring artists and performers nearly 30 years ago while a camera crew recorded them for a first-of-its-kind, nonfiction soap opera.“I said that text is fake,” Gentry recalled. But as she and her former TV roommates — who have stayed in constant contact since “The Real World” premiered in May 1992 — started checking in with each other, they discovered they had all had received similar, authentic invitations. And so they all agreed to accept them.The result is “The Real World Homecoming: New York,” a new reality series that reconvenes those original seven strangers, picked once again to live in a loft and have their lives taped — not as wide-eyed teenagers and 20-somethings eager to bare their immature souls, but as parents and professionals in their 40s and 50s, with families, careers and a fuller understanding of what they exchanged decades ago for a modest amount of visibility.“Homecoming,” which begins March 4 on the new Paramount+ streaming service, allows viewers to catch up with its fully-grown alums, who take a certain pride in having made “The Real World” before the genre it helped create became ubiquitous, codified and mercenary.The 1992 cast didn’t realize they were creating a new TV genre. Clockwise from top left, Kevin Powell, Eric Nies, Andre Comeau, Heather B. Gardner, Julie Gentry, Norman Korpi and Becky Blasband.Credit…Chris CarrollHaving lived for so long in a world that “The Real World” helped to create, we can sometimes forget what an offbeat proposition it was when it was introduced and how different the media environment was that awaited it.Before the show arrived, MTV filled its airtime with low-rent coverage of youth culture and narrowly tailored blocks of music videos; the network had homegrown franchises like “Headbangers Ball,” “Club MTV” and “Yo! MTV Raps” and it played “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in constant rotation while other signature programs like “Beavis and Butt-Head” were still on the horizon.“The Real World,” created by the producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray, took its cues from the 1970s PBS documentary series “An American Family” and from scripted teen dramas of the day like “Beverly Hills, 90210.” It was part gamble and part stunt, not an attempt to spawn a generation’s worth of programming on MTV (in spinoffs and clones like “Road Rules,” “The Osbournes” and “Jersey Shore”) and across television.But the DNA of “The Real World” lives on to this day — in highly mutated form, in some cases — in reality franchises like “Big Brother,” “Real Housewives,” “The Bachelor,” “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and countless other shows that exist to mine content from social conflict.For its original cast members, “The Real World” promised the chance to live rent-free in New York while they pursued their careers, but it bonded and branded them in ways they never expected.“No matter what, we’re connected for life by this,” said Kevin Powell, who has remained a journalist, author and activist. “No one can say they were the first — we are the first.”“Homecoming” offers its cast members the chance to look back on their misadventures and conflicts from the original show and reassess themselves for better or worse. As Gentry, an aspiring dancer from Birmingham, Ala., who became a mother of two and a community garden organizer, put it, “We’ve evolved but we haven’t really changed.”They are also hopeful that by revisiting their past debates on what were once taboo subjects for TV — sometimes heated arguments on race, sexuality and privilege in America — they can do better for themselves and set a healthier example for viewers.“Hopefully we’ve reached this level where the slings and arrows and heatedness can mature into a rational conversation and a real discourse,” said Rebecca Blasband, a singer-songwriter and recording artist who went by Becky on the original series.She continued, “Because that’s what we need in this country. We’ve become a combative society, and in that combat, we lose reason.”Norman Korpi was working as a photographer and fashion designer when he learned about “The Real World” from producers who were scouting his loft as a possible location for the series. The show appealed to him because of its intended focus on young people trying to break into creative careers and its potential to democratize TV programming.Set in the same SoHo loft, “Homecoming” offers its cast members the chance to look back on their past misadventures and reassess themselves.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York Times“It allowed you to see people who had never been shown before, to be exposed to people you’d never encountered and see their stories evolve,” he said.The show’s Black cast members felt their decision to appear on “The Real World” was especially fraught, requiring them to weigh the value of representing the communities they came from against the credibility it would cost them there.Heather B. Gardner, then an up-and-coming rapper, said she felt it was important to appear on MTV at a time when the network featured few Black people and hip-hop was widely portrayed as crude and inherently violent.But Gardner, now a Sirius XM radio host, said that many peers were skeptical of her motives at the time.“My record company didn’t understand it,” she said. “And the hip-hop world didn’t initially embrace it. It took a lot of work to earn their stamp, of me being like, ‘Yo, this was just a documentary — I didn’t quote-unquote sell out.’”The housemates attended political rallies, met NBA stars and enjoyed some good-natured hedonism on MTV’s dime.“My daughter will say things to me like, ‘What were you thinking, taking your top off in Jamaica?,’” Gentry said. “I tell her, ‘I had no idea you were ever going to exist, so I couldn’t really think about it.’”They also quickly found out what happened when people stop getting polite and found themselves in heated disagreements about their different backgrounds. In the show’s first episode, Gentry saw that Gardner carried a beeper and jokingly asked her if she sold drugs. A later episode, called “Julie Thinks Kevin Is Psycho!,” recorded an intense fight between those two roommates, where Powell declared, “Racism is everywhere,” and Gentry retorted, “Because of people like you — not people like me.”For the original cast, “The Real World” was a chance to live rent-free in New York, but it bonded them in unexpected ways.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesBut time passed and temperatures cooled. Cast members became friends outside of the show and got on group texts with each other; Gardner was even a guest at Gentry’s wedding. “The Real World” became Patient Zero in the viral spread of reality TV, running 33 seasons in its original incarnation as reality programming overtook the programming grids of MTV and countless other channels.As MTV’s parent company, ViacomCBS, prepares to relaunch its CBS All Access service as Paramount+, it sees reality TV and “The Real World Homecoming,” in particular, as a powerful lure for potential subscribers.The original “Real World” series “was the purest of the social experiments,” said Chris McCarthy, the president of MTV Entertainment Group. “People have held deep relationships with these cast members, in a way that, quite honestly, we only dream could happen today.”Noting that MTV also plans to bring a resuscitated version of “The Real World” to Paramount+, McCarthy said he expected that “Homecoming” is a series that “will bring back lapsed viewers and the next version could be something totally different for brand-new viewers.”But the thought of returning to the show in middle age is one that some cast members had to sit with. No one wanted to be seen as trying to recapture past glories: “How could we recreate something that we did at that time in our lives?” said Gardner. “Unless we stay drunk the whole time, it’s not going to work.”Nies’s participation in the new show was limited to video chats. Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe roommates were not encouraged, either, by the state of modern-day reality TV, some of which has a distasteful and selfish tone and has helped unleash unsustainable levels of narcissism.“There’s a very greedy aspect of the industry that’s like, ‘Whoever can behave the worst or have some sex tapes, go right to the front of the line,’” Korpi said.Blasband said that the reality genre was not solely to blame for America’s problems, but it reflected and amplified the national psyche, serving as “an expression of the subconscious of our society,” and could be used for good or ill.When “The Real World” first appeared, she said, “It was very refreshing for people to feel that they were actually connecting to something other than canned laughter.”But in the years since, she said, the reality genre has embraced “a tabloid mentality that began to bleed into news journalism — I see it on CNN or Fox News, a heightened, incendiary drama that doesn’t belong there.”Some of the roommates said they felt more compelled to participate after events like the Black Lives Matter protests of the spring and summer had reawakened them to the complex realities of racial disparities in America that they lacked the ability to articulate back in 1992.The cast members look back fondly on their “Real World” experiences.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesBut they lament what the reality TV genre, which the show pioneered, has become.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesAndre Comeau, now a rock musician living in Los Angeles, said that a torrent of videos that he had seen in recent years, capturing incidents of police violence against people of color, had been “so shocking to me, to see that on an everyday basis — I had no idea that it was so prevalent.”Comeau said he felt it was important to discuss these developments on-camera with his Black co-stars and to explain how his own stance had evolved since the original season.“At the time, I thought I was oppressed,” he said with a sardonic chuckle. “Being a young, longhaired white male living in a city, I would get pulled over on a regular basis. But that is nowhere near the level of institutional racism that happens every day.”The DNA of “The Real World” lives on in countless shows that exist to mine content from social conflict.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesNaturally, the roommates’ return to their downtown Manhattan lodgings came with some ready-made reality-TV drama. Eric Nies, the fashion model who parlayed his “Real World” fame into hosting roles on MTV programs like “The Grind,” said that he made it as far as a New York hotel room and was never actually able to set foot in the SoHo loft for “Homecoming.”Asked why, Nies said in a phone interview, “I’m not sure how much I can get into that right now.”Nies, who was able to communicate with the other housemates over a video monitor, elliptically added that the circumstances of his separation were “definitely not by my choice, but I accepted the outcome — more will be revealed in the future.” (MTV declined to comment on this.)Other cast members said that they found value in participating in “Homecoming.” Korpi, who is gay, said he wanted to revisit his experience of coming out publicly on the show and its impact on his life when the series ended.At the time he appeared on “The Real World,” Korpi said he had just ended a relationship with another man. “However, when the show aired, I was perceived by some cast and the public as bisexual, which was hurtful and a lot to bear,” he said.He added, “If you didn’t live in that time, you don’t know what it was like to come out when there’s nobody out, being gay,” he said. “People were terrified of that.”Korpi, who has been a filmmaker, a painter and an industrial designer and continues to work in his family’s bakery in Michigan, said that traditional paths in the entertainment industry were not necessarily open to him after his “Real World” season.“It wasn’t like any agent was going to touch a gay person with a 10-foot-pole,” he said. “I struggled a little bit — or a lot — and I realized I needed to make the work for myself.”Powell said he also had suffered for how “The Real World” had portrayed him.“I got stigmatized as a politically angry Black man, and that stuck with me for a long time,” he said. “It was very painful having to deal with that.”Though he did not regret the passionate feelings he had expressed on the original show, Powell said that he felt he owed it to himself to show that he could engage differently with his roommates on the new series.The cast members, wide-eyed teenagers and 20-somethings back in 1992, are now parents and professionals in their 40s and 50s.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York Times“At the time, was I very heated in a different kind of way about racism? Absolutely,” he said. “Am I different person now? You will see that when you watch the episodes.”Gentry, who had memorably sparred with Powell, said she also wished to make amends and do better this time around. “All the stuff on race, I said a lot of pretty naïve things in that first season,” she said.Powell said there was a lesson that the roommates and their viewers alike could take away from “Homecoming”: that it is possible to engage one another about our disparate perspectives and experiences as long as we do so respectfully.“We have to have uncomfortable conversations with people about things we don’t agree with,” he said. “But it has to be with love.”Shooting finished on “Homecoming” in January, and the cast members have spent the weeks since reflecting on what it meant to them. But though the reunion might seem likely to serve as a kind of bookend to their original “Real World” experiences, some were hesitant to describe it in such terms.“‘Closure’ insinuates that there was trauma or something,” Blasband said. “I have a lot of fondness for my roommates.”Gardner, who was initially reluctant to do the new show, said afterward, “I don’t regret it at all.” But not even a previous season spent living her life for public consumption was enough to prepare her for a second go-round — to have her old self reflected back to her at the same time that her current self was being held up for examination all over again.“Bruh, it’s different,” she said. “The mirror is gigantic. The mirror is Macy’s window at this point.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    American Evangelicals, Israeli Settlers and a Skeptical Filmmaker

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmerican Evangelicals, Israeli Settlers and a Skeptical FilmmakerA new documentary illuminates what the director calls an “unholy alliance” that sharply altered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Trump administration.Maya Zinshtein, in Tel Aviv, directed “’Til Kingdom Come.”Credit…Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesFeb. 26, 2021Updated 11:42 a.m. ETTEL AVIV — The bear hug between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and their governments was a partnership like no other the two countries had seen. For four years, Israel was Washington’s favorite foreign-policy arena and Jerusalem its best friend, and the brash new American approach to the Middle East dominated Israel’s national-security discourse and its politics.Far less understood was one of the key underpinnings of that relationship: the intricate symbiosis between evangelical Christians in the United States and religious Jewish settlers in the West Bank. In a new documentary, “’Til Kingdom Come,” the Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein delves into this “unholy alliance,” as she calls it, showing how the settlers reap enormous political support and raise money from evangelicals, who, she argues, directly and indirectly subsidize the settlers’ steady takeover of the West Bank, which the Palestinians want for a future state. In return, evangelicals edge closer to fulfilling the prophecy many adhere to that the second coming of Christ cannot happen without the return of diaspora Jews to the Holy Land.That vision doesn’t end well for the Jews: They must accept Jesus or be massacred and condemned to hell. But the film shows Christian Zionists and right-wing Israelis agreeing to disagree about the End of Days while cooperating, and even exploiting one another, in the here and now — and making the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians more difficult to resolve.“’Til Kingdom Come” examines the ties between American evangelicals and Israeli settlers.Credit…Abraham (Abie) TroenThe film is being released in the United States on Friday, but when it was broadcast in Israel in the fall it led to a wave of guilt and soul-searching, in part for revealing how families in an impoverished Kentucky community are cajoled by their pastor into donating to an Israeli charity despite the country’s wealth, with a tech sector that routinely mints billionaires. But the film is just as likely to teach Christian and Jewish audiences in the United States a great deal about subjects they may have thought they already understood — including how American politics really work.Zinshtein, 39, a Russian-born Israeli, said she was a classic immigrant, with an outsider viewpoint and an ambition to make a mark in her adopted homeland. Here are edited excerpts from an interview with her conducted at her home in Tel Aviv and by phone.You plunged into your project beginning in mid-2017, months before President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the first big display of the power of the relationship. What drew you in?When you live in Israel, you’ve heard about the evangelicals, but no more. People talk about “these Christians that love us.” But they don’t get what that love means. It’s this force beneath the surface, which has an agenda, and people just don’t understand it. But I want to know who is influencing my life.What did you expect to witness?It was clear that promises had been made to the evangelicals during the 2016 campaign. But no one expected things to happen so fast. I remember a meeting with one evangelical leader who’d told me, “Be patient, maybe by late 2019 or early 2020, Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital.” He did it three months later, and he moved the embassy six months after that. In my plan, the embassy was supposed to be the third act! I was terrified: What do I do now?What’s wrong with the agree-to-disagree collaboration between American evangelicals and Israeli settlers?We have our democracy, and the settlers are a certain percentage of the country. But they have a much bigger influence than their share of the population. And when you have this enormous political power entering our conversation, it changes the balance. Remember the number of Jews in the world, and the number of evangelicals. It’s not an equal relationship, and we are not the stronger partner.My brother’s in the reserves. He’ll get called up in the next war. And there will always be a war here — it’s when, not if. The evangelicals don’t want people to get killed, but they believe war is a sign. In whose name will we fight these wars?Plus, these people have a very specific set of beliefs that drives them. In the film, for example, you see them celebrating the ban on transgender [members of] the American military. You’re signing on with their whole agenda. You cannot take just one part.Money from Evangelical Americans flows to Israeli charities.Credit…Abraham (Abie) TroenThere’s so much attention paid in the film to Christians’ love for Israel. Do you accept that it’s really a form of love?When you start questioning that, Israelis say, “Wait a minute, Maya. Don’t we have enough people who hate us? Finally, someone loves us. Let’s just take it.” But when someone loves you just for being Jewish, there will always be someone who will hate you just for being Jewish. Someone told me, “When they say they love you, they mean they love Jesus. You are just part of the story. You are the key, and you know what happens with the key after the door is open, right? You don’t need it anymore.”Love is really just another word for support, no?But nobody asked, what did this support actually mean? It’s not “support of Israel.” It’s support of a right-wing agenda that many people here wouldn’t agree with.Evangelicals are the only significant power outside Israel that is openly supporting the settlements. No one else does. But the dangerous thing is that they’re turning that into support for Israel. Pastor John Hagee, when he started Christians United for Israel, was all about the settlements. Today you won’t find him talking about the settlements at all. Just “Israel.” The film shows a religious settler telling visiting Christians that they are bit players in a movie in which Jews are the stars.The amazing thing in this relationship is each side thinks the other one is stupid. Each side is trying to trick the other.The access you won was extraordinary. You didn’t just get an entire Kentucky church and its pastors to open up to you and your crew. You filmed inside the powerful Republican Study Committee and at a gala of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, at Mar-a-Lago.It was mind-blowing. You saw all these wealthy Christians and Jews sitting together, saw Christians give testimony about how “before I started to donate to Israel, I had a small shop in Cleveland, and today I have a huge chain of stores, just because I started to donate to Israel.” They think it helps them in their lives.Zinshtein said she made the documentary because “I want to know who is influencing my life.”Credit…Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesHow did you gain that access?The fact that we were Israelis played a crucial role, because we can’t immediately be put in a certain box. If I were a Jew from New York, I’d never have been able to make this film. American Jews are recognized as the other side. We are not. We are part of this bond. The bond is with Israel.You follow the money, showing an elderly Israeli woman who survived a terrorist attack and now gets free food and shoes. If Israel is so wealthy, why does it need foreigners’ help to feed and clothe her?It’s embarrassing. But Israel invests so much in the settlements. Christian money is filling needs created by the settlements. Maybe instead of, I don’t know, building roads in the settlements, we need to take care of our poor. It exposes a much bigger question of priorities.The donors include people in one of America’s poorest counties.I cried so badly. It’s freezing and you’re in a coat and you see kids in a house with no windows coming out with no shoes. Kids with rat bites on their legs. Some Israelis who saw the film asked if they could send money.What do you want the takeaway to be for evangelical viewers?That [Israelis are] not just a Bible, we’re people with a present and a near future. That Israelis and Palestinians want to live in peace. Just because your faith says that God said to Abraham that all this land belongs to the Jewish people — they are not going to suffer the consequences. We are the ones who’ll suffer the consequences, in real life, not just in the afterlife.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Netflix Productions Are More Diverse Than Studio Films, Study Shows

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNetflix Productions Are More Diverse Than Studio Films, Study ShowsThe study, which the streaming giant commissioned, looked at films and TV series from 2018 and 2019.Ali Wong and Randall Park star in “Always Be My Maybe” on Netflix.Credit…NetflixFeb. 26, 2021, 9:30 a.m. ETFifty-two percent of Netflix films and series in 2018 and 2019 had girls or women in starring roles. And 35.7 percent of all Netflix leads during that span came from underrepresented groups, compared with 28 percent in the top 100 grossing theatrical films.Those findings were released on Friday by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which Netflix commissioned to look at its own U.S.-based scripted original films and series. The study analyzed 126 movies and 180 series released during 2018 and 2019.“Notably, across 19 of 22 indicators we included in this study, Netflix demonstrated improvement across films and series from 2018 to 2019,” said Stacy L. Smith, who is the head of the initiative and has been studying representation in film and television since 2005, during an online symposium the company held to discuss the survey. She said Netflix had also increased the percentage of women onscreen and working as directors, screenwriters and producers; for Black cast and crew; and for women of color in leading roles.Of the 130 directors of Netflix films in those two years, 25 percent were women in 2018 and 20.7 percent in 2019 — outpacing the feature films released theatrically by other studios over the same period.While Netflix reflects gender equality in its leading roles in television series and films, when every speaking character is evaluated, those roles did not match what the country looks like from a gender and race perspective. Only 19.9 percent of all stories met that mark. For instance, 96 percent of stories did not have any women onscreen who identify as American Indian/Native Alaskan, and 68.3 percent of the content evaluated did not include a speaking role for a Latina. That number rose to 85 percent when it came to speaking roles for Middle Eastern/North African women.Scott Stuber, Netflix’s film chief, acknowledged how crucial those kinds of small parts were to working actors.“The SAG card is everything,” he said, referring to the Screen Actors Guild membership that performers earn by having roles in various projects. “That is the beginning of the dream. We have to be very active with our filmmakers and our casting directors to fix that. That’s the next great artist. That’s the next Viola Davis.”According to the report, L.G.B.T.Q. characters at every level of film and television were marginalized, particularly transgender characters. And just 11.8 percent of L.G.B.T.Q. characters in leading roles were shown as parents.“I was shocked that we are not doing great there,” said Bela Bajaria, the head of global TV for Netflix. “I feel like we are so active in our story lines. But the lack of gay parents in our shows, that’s a clear takeaway.”According to Netflix’s chief executive Ted Sarandos, the company is committed to releasing a new report every two years through 2026.“Our hope is to create a benchmark for ourselves, and more broadly across the industry,” he wrote in a blog post that accompanied the report.The director and screenwriter Alan Yang said during the symposium that he was bullish on the future of inclusion in entertainment, especially at Netflix, which produced a series he created with Aziz Ansari, “Master of None,” and his feature film “Tigertail.”“It’s going to improve a lot if Bela and Scott buy all the shows and films I pitch them,” Mr. Yang said with a laugh.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Seth Meyers Is Excited to See Trump’s Tax Returns

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBest of Late NightSeth Meyers Is Excited to See Trump’s Tax ReturnsMeyers said it shouldn’t be hard for the Manhattan D.A. to find a crime in “the tax records of a guy who claims to be a billionaire, yet paid only $750 in federal income taxes when he was president.”“That’s right, the Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed that it’s in possession of Trump’s tax records, as evidenced by the white smoke coming from the Statue of Liberty’s torch,” Meyers joked.Credit…NBCFeb. 26, 2021, 1:43 a.m. ETWelcome 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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The Return of Trump’s TaxesFormer President Donald Trump’s financial records were turned over to the Manhattan district attorney this week as part of a tax and bank-fraud investigation.“That’s right, the Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed that it’s in possession of Trump’s tax records, as evidenced by the white smoke coming from the Statue of Liberty’s torch,” Seth Meyers joked on Thursday.“The Manhattan district attorney’s office today confirmed it is now in possession of former President Trump’s tax records and, yes, both of them.” — SETH MEYERS“I wonder how many pages of the Cheesecake Factory menu he snuck in there.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And look, I’m no prosecutor, but it can’t be that hard to find a crime in the tax records of a guy who claims to be a billionaire, yet paid only $750 in federal income taxes when he was president.” — SETH MEYERS“You can tell that they’re Trump’s real tax returns because under total loss, he still didn’t declare the election.” — JIMMY FALLON“And yes, there are plenty of technically legal ways that the wealthy and corporations avoid taxes, which is a scandal in itself, but something tells me Trump doesn’t just limit himself to the legal stuff. I’m guessing he commits crimes the way the rest of us order apps for the tables: ‘Let’s just get — should we just get one of everything?’” — SETH MEYERS“This whole thing started with Stormy Daniels. Donald Trump is the only guy who can cheat on his wife and his taxes in the same bed.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The crazy thing is that the part about paying no taxes on millions of dollars — that isn’t what he might get busted for. That was probably legal. He could claim huge losses, pay no taxes, and still live like a billionaire. It’s what they call ‘Orange Privilege.’ It’s specific to him. And hopefully he’ll be in an orange jumpsuit very soon, too.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But this really is big news, because after they thoroughly go through each document, Trump could be charged around the year 3000.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Dropping the Mr. Edition)“There was a major announcement from Mr. Potato Headquarters today: Hasbro is dropping the ‘bro.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Mr. Potato Head is no longer a ‘mister. ’ And not, as I originally assumed, because he finally finished his Ph.D — his potato head doctorate.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“No, it’s because Hasbro is giving the spud a gender-neutral new name: ‘Potato Head.’ But if it’s not assigned a gender, what bathroom will it use?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Naturally, when this news hit Twitter, the world’s top idiots weighed in. Piers Morgan tweeted, ‘Who was actually offended by Mr. Potato Head being male? I want names. These woke imbeciles are destroying the world.’ Yes, they’re destroying the world. How will children grow up without a strong male potato role model? Won’t someone think of the tots?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Even in death, they found a way to cancel Don Rickles.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Why are we still putting eyes and lips on potatoes anyway? Isn’t this what children did during the Depression?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And by the way, Hasbro isn’t the only one dumping the ‘mister.’ From now on these popular American products will be known as ‘Salty, ‘Peanut,’ ‘Rogers,’ ‘T’ and ‘Clean.’ No word yet from ‘Magoo,’ but we’ll see.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingJames Corden took Prince Harry on a socially distanced tour of Los Angeles on Thursday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutJulien Baker’s “Little Oblivions” is an unrelentingly reflective album.Credit…Alysse GafkjenThe queer, sober, Christian singer-songwriter Julien Baker plays every instrument on her third studio album, “Little Oblivions.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The Birth of ‘Rent,’ Its Creator’s Death and the 25 Years Since

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Birth of ‘Rent,’ Its Creator’s Death and the 25 Years SinceWith a virtual performance marking the Broadway musical’s anniversary, original cast and creative team members talk about losing Jonathan Larson and carrying on his legacy.Jonathan Larson, left, who wrote the music, lyrics and book of “Rent,” with the play’s director, Michael Greif, in 1996.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021Updated 3:04 p.m. ETWhat’s 525,600 times 25?It has been 25 years — or, to use a memorable “Seasons of Love” calculation, 13.14 million minutes — since “Rent” upended Broadway’s sense of what musical theater could be. Jonathan Larson’s rock-infused reboot of “La Bohème” had already generated positive chatter during its Off Broadway rehearsals at New York Theater Workshop. But then came full-throated shouts of disbelief and anguish on Jan. 25, 1996, when, hours after the final dress rehearsal, Larson was found dead in his apartment from an aortic aneurysm. He was 35 years old.His shocking death came right before the start of previews, when a creative team typically makes changes based on audience reactions. After briefly considering whether to bring in a script doctor, the team decided instead to streamline Larson’s music and lyrics as needed.The move paid off. Within weeks, “Rent” had achieved a level of hype that would not be rivaled on Broadway until “Hamilton” almost 20 years later: earning rave reviews (The New York Times’s Ben Brantley said it “shimmers with hope for the future of the American musical”); a Pulitzer Prize for Drama; and a frantic transfer to Broadway, where it ran for 12 years and won four Tony Awards.Members of the original Broadway cast in “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love,” which will stream on Tuesday.Credit…via New York Theater WorkshopOn Tuesday, New York Theater Workshop will use its annual fund-raising gala to commemorate the show’s silver anniversary with “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love.” The largely prerecorded virtual performance, available to stream through March 6, will feature most of the original cast, who still communicate regularly in a group chat, along with high-profile “Rent”-heads like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Platt, Billy Porter and Ali Stroker.Members of the original production’s cast and creative team discussed the stratospheric heights and ghastly lows of 1996, remembering the gifted young writer who would have been 61 years old today. Here are the lightly edited excerpts.‘We had to do it for Jonathan’NANCY KASSAK DIEKMANN, former managing director of New York Theater Workshop: Jonathan had the kind of health insurance where he could only go to the emergency room, and he had already been once. They told him it was food poisoning or something, and they sent him home. On the day of the final dress rehearsal, he wasn’t feeling well, and he called to say he was going to take a nap. I said to him, “Jon, why don’t you let me make you an appointment and pay for you to see my doctor?” I always wonder what would have happened if he had gone.JAMES C. NICOLA, artistic director of New York Theater Workshop: Everyone felt a degree of ownership and responsibility to do their absolute best on his behalf. It ceased being a job and became a calling.Anthony Rapp, left, and Adam Pascal in rehearsal at the New York Theater Workshop in 1996.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesANTHONY RAPP, who played Mark: From that last dress rehearsal until mid-July, no one missed a performance. It seemed impossible. No one could. I don’t say that to brag. I just think it showed our level of commitment. We had to do it for Jonathan.MICHAEL GREIF, director: One terrible advantage of being in your mid-30s working on “Rent” was that you had a decade of experience of loss. Jonathan’s death made him part of the community he was honoring.ADAM PASCAL, who played Roger: People are often surprised to hear this, but I only knew Jonathan for about four weeks. I was cast in December, and he died in January. I grieved the loss on behalf of his family, who we got to know afterward. But I personally miss him the way the public misses him. I miss the music that never got written.‘We did a lot of cutting’NICOLA: Four of us met the day after Jonathan died — me, Michael Greif, Tim Weil and Lynn Thomson [the dramaturge]. And one thing that came up was, “Should we bring in another composer/writer to finish the job? Is that the choice that has integrity?” But we quickly decided against it.TIM WEIL, musical supervisor: Our idea was, “Let’s do what Jonathan wanted us to do,” even if we couldn’t know exactly what that was.GREIF: We did a lot of cutting. We cut things that we felt Jonathan would agree to or even advocate cutting.RAPP: I think Jonathan was raring to go for the preview process. It would have been very discombobulating and weird for morale to have a foreigner — I mean that artistically, not xenophobically — come in at that point.DIEKMANN: Tim had to step up on the musical side, and he did. He and Michael knew what Jonathan wanted — because, God knows, he was there all the time.WEIL: I still continue to make little bitty changes for new productions, since it has always been tailored to specific performers. I think I’m the only one who has that kind of license.‘Everything was just coming at us’WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA, who played Angel: Everything was just coming at us, and there was a part of me that was on automatic pilot. The only thing that felt safe and constant was going back on that stage every night. The most stable thing was that it was happening to all of us.DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA, who played Mimi: Today is 12 weeks out from a partial knee replacement for me. And part of me is like, “How did I get here?” But I know exactly how I got here: by playing Mimi eight times a week.RAPP: I have weird little nagging injuries that still bother me from carrying around that video camera for two hours straight.Daphne Rubin-Vega, who played Mimi in the original cast, with Adam Pascal, who played Rodger. Credit…via New York Theater Workshop‘Representation really matters’GREIF: The idealism and openheartedness of the piece, which I was very wary of at the time and found myself guarding against, has had a profound impact on very, very young people. I’m talking 12- and 13-year-olds. And in many ways, “Rent” opened the door to the possibility of the musicals I went on to direct, musicals like “Next to Normal” and “Dear Evan Hansen.”RUBIN-VEGA: Representation really matters, and it was important for a woman who looks like me to be thrust into that ingénue role.PASCAL: It is something that I’m clearly forever connected to. And it is something that is still literally paying the rent. Do you know about Cameo? Earlier today, I did five Cameos where I sang “Rent” songs.NICOLA: I am just now able to hear these songs without any baggage or context — just hear them as musical theater songs. And I’m thinking, “These are really good songs.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    in Television

    How a TV Critic Turned to Podcasts During a Pandemic

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookHow a TV Critic Turned to Podcasts During a PandemicTV meant to be responsive to the moment seemed distant. But podcasts, with the intimate production values, felt more immediate and relevant than ever before.Credit…Hudson ChristieFeb. 25, 2021, 5:02 a.m. ETIn a year otherwise defined by loss, one area of our lives has remained untouched; abundant, even. Movie theaters closed and blockbusters were delayed. Music and theater venues shuttered. But TV marched on. The number of original scripted shows dipped slightly, but international series and older shows arriving on the streaming platforms more than filled the void of shows canceled or delayed.And yet, as the pandemic months piled up, TV’s seeming imperviousness to the halt of all other cultural activities started seeming less like a virtue and more like a vice, like denial, like a dispatch from a faker world. Much in the way I grew to prefer an old-fashioned phone call to a video chat, podcasts, not television, became my go-to medium in quarantine. With their shorter lead times and intimate production values, they felt more immediate and more relevant than ever before.As a TV critic, I had a policy to stay on top of it all, which was, “if I’m home, I’m watching something.” Then I was home for a year, and that policy, like everything else, changed.Also, I was alone. Alone as I have ever been. I went weeks without making eye contact with anyone. Zero hugs between March 11 and July 4. And all my shows just kept making it worse — everyone was always touching, those lucky bastards. A crowd scene would make my heart race, a character’s cough made me feel as if my skin was shrinking.Even TV meant to be responsive to the moment felt distant and curdled. Late-night hosts did their monologues from home, but the format and rhythms of the material stayed the same, and their jokes hung in empty air, sentences with no punctuation. Scripted shows about the pandemic, like “Love In the Time of Corona,” were brittle at best, and even when dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy” addressed the disease directly, mass death was less dramatic than a surprise cameo. Goofy shows, like “Floor Is Lava,” designed to be an escape, instead felt degrading. People are dying! Society has collapsed! I don’t want to watch dumdums fall down.I’ve spent years happily watching 70 hours of television a week, even listening to shows in the shower. But suddenly TV was no longer cutting it. I could no longer focus, and now I’m not even sure I remember what focusing is.At least with podcasts, you’re supposed to half-do something else, even if that something else had previously been “ride the subway,” and now it is “do the dishes for the 9,000th time.”You’re also supposed to listen to podcasts alone, but maybe I wasn’t quite all by myself, because I was listening to other people commiserate about kitchen woes on the podcast “Home Cooking.” This pandemic-oriented food and cooking advice show from Hrishikesh Hirway and Samin Nosrat was easily the podcast highlight of the year, bright but not phony, filled with suggestions and compassion and jokes.There were plenty of good TV shows that came out this past year, and even a few great ones, beautiful and surprising and fascinating — “I May Destroy You,” “Ted Lasso,” “Teenage Bounty Hunters,” “How To With John Wilson.” But oftentimes I wanted more direct reflections of the world around me, the kind of contact that was, that is, impossible when you’re effectively housebound. I wanted something more like validation, where everyone was miserable too.I listened to Esther Perel counsel couples in various lockdowns on “Where Should We Begin.” When self-recrimination spirals took over for generalized malaise, I listened to “Dead Eyes,” a podcast where the actor and comedian Connor Ratliff investigates in tremendous detail the time he was fired from “Band of Brothers” — a real making-lemonade-from-deep-emotional-wound lemons.I never miss an episode of “Stop Podcasting Yourself,” a genial Canadian comedy chitchat podcast hosted by Dave Shumka and Graham Clark whose overheard (and “overseen”) segment is now even more of a treasure to me, given how little in-person overhearing we do these days. This is the longest I’ve gone in my life without singing in a group, and an entire wing of my spirit has atrophied, so I listen to the pop music theory show “Strong Songs.”Turns out the prudes are right, and too much screen time will fry you from the inside. Characters appeared in my dreams, or I’d catch myself thinking, “who was I just talking to about this?” when the answer was “that conversation happened on a TV show.” But then quarantine hardened me I guess, and now it feels as if everything is behind glass, and TV shows barely register unless I’m concentrating extra hard on them for work. To keep it together this year, though, required a state of emotional hibernation alongside the physical one, and podcasts are just small enough to get into my small little loser bear cave. There’s less emotional buy-in than with a scripted drama, but they possess a legitimacy and honesty largely absent in reality and unscripted television.In the coming months, when, please, oh please, aspects of our old lives re-emerge, and we all slither out of the anti-chrysalis that turned us back into caterpillars, maybe I will go to a ballgame, or the theater, or to the movies, or, oh God, even a party. And on my way there, I will be listening to a podcast.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    When an Actor Calls With a Poem to Share

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookWhen an Actor Calls With a Poem to ShareA Paris playhouse has developed a program of one-on-one “consultations,” delivered by its artists while the theater is closed.The singer Dimitra Kontou performing this week for an elderly patient at the Charles-Foix hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 3:31 a.m. ETPARIS — “I am calling you for a poetic consultation,” said a warm voice on the telephone. “It all starts with a very simple question: How are you?”Since March, almost 15,000 people around the world have received a call like this. These conversations with actors, who offer a one-on-one chat before reading a poem selected for the recipient, started as a lockdown initiative by a prominent Paris playhouse, the Théâtre de la Ville, in order to keep its artists working while stages remained dark.It’s free: Anyone can sign up for a time slot, or make a gift of a call to someone. The exchange generally starts with simple questions about the recipient’s life, then ranges in any direction; after 20 to 25 minutes, the actor introduces the poem.As coronavirus restrictions in France stretch on, the program has become such a hit that the Théâtre de la Ville now offers consultations in 23 languages, including Farsi, its latest addition. It has also been expanded to encompass different subjects and formats: Since December, the actors have held consultations at a hospital and at emergency shelters run by the city of Paris.When Johanna White, the comedian who called me, asked how I was doing, I answered honestly. We may tell white lies to reassure loved ones, but there is no reason to skirt the truth with a kind stranger. White and I shared our pandemic coping strategies and talked about the ways in which theater has adapted in the past year.And then White picked my poem: “Incantation,” by the Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz. “Human reason is beautiful and invincible,” she began after a pause.A year into the pandemic, I’ll admit I had my doubts about the healing power of yet another replacement for live performance. Yet when I hung up the phone, I felt a little lighter. White, who has a rich, deep voice, was adept at putting an audience of one at ease, and Milosz’s words held hope.“Through the phone it can be intimate, because generally you’re isolated,” White, a trilingual voice actor, said in an interview the next day.The comedian Johanna White, who estimates that in the past year, she has talked to between 400 and 500 people around the world.Credit…via Théâtre de la Ville She estimates that in the past year, she has talked to between 400 and 500 people, from places including Wisconsin, Los Angeles, Chile and Niger. A man based in Beirut told her about local riots in which he had lost half of a hand; from Mexico, an 85-year-old woman shared her grief about being separated from her 92-year-old lover by pandemic-mandated rules.Consultations involve a great deal of improvisation, White said, including choosing a poem for a person you’ve only just met. “Each of us has our own method,” she added. “I file them by emotions, by feelings.”For the director of the Théâtre de la Ville, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, the idea of individual consultations with actors didn’t come out of the blue. In 2002, when he was at the helm of the northern French theater La Comédie, in Reims, he initiated in-person sessions at a local bar. Passers-by could meet an artist and leave with a poetic “prescription” — a printed version of the poem that was read to them.Last February, he revived the concept at a Paris shopping mall, Italie Deux, where visitors could drop in for a chat between errands — and then the pandemic struck. The Théâtre de la Ville immediately pivoted to phone consultations. “We were ready,” Demarcy-Mota said in a phone interview this month.Other institutions have taken an interest in the program’s popularity. The Théâtre de la Ville has partnered with a handful of European playhouses, including the Teatro della Pergola in Florence and the Orkeny Theater in Budapest, to expand its roster of actors. Additionally, Demarcy-Mota and his team are in the process of holding phone training sessions with around 100 actors from nine African countries, including Benin and Mali, so theaters there can replicate the program.Demarcy-Mota acknowledged that the consultation format didn’t suit all stage actors. “Some were scared. You’re no longer performing while someone else watches: Instead, you’re in the position of listening to someone.” It involves a degree of psychology, White said, but “we’re not psychologists,” she added. “People need to feel that they’ve got a real person with them, that we’re in the same situation.”The Théâtre de la Ville now employs a total of 108 “consultants.” While most are actors, they also include singers, dancers and a handful of scientists, who share their knowledge via “scientific consultations” as part of a program started in December. (These are being offered only in French for now.)Most of the scientific consultations are also individual and take place over the phone, but the Théâtre de la Ville is testing group sessions over Zoom. Last week, I joined one with the astrophysicist Jean Audouze.To explain the relativity of time, Audouze suggested that when we talk via videoconference — that is, over electromagnetic waves — there is an infinitesimal delay between the moment someone speaks and the moment the other hears. “We’re all on our own time,” he said, something to bear in mind, perhaps, the next time a Zoom meeting descends into chaos.While remote sessions are the most virus-averse format, the Théâtre de la Ville also brought back in-person consultations this winter in partnership with public institutions. The Charles-Foix hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb, was the first to allow performers to come for conversations with staff members and patients. (Several other hospitals are scheduled to follow in the coming months.)Dimitra Kontou entertaining patients at the Charles-Foix hospital.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesThe actor Hugo Jasienski interacting with the patient Éliane Le Bras.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesDimitra Kontou, at the piano, with Simone Gouffe.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesOn a recent afternoon, the actor Hugo Jasienski and the singer and musician Dimitra Kontou went from room to room in a residential care building at the Charles-Foix for elderly patients, known as L’Orbe. As on the phone, each encounter led to a poem or, in Kontou’s case, a song.For some residents, especially those with dementia, the performances were adapted: Instead of asking questions, Kontou sang to them directly, in a transparent mask so they could see her mouth. Still, the music inspired interaction. At one point, a 97-year-old woman, Simone Gouffe, almost rose from her wheelchair and started singing, her voice powerful despite her slight frame.With other patients, the kind of conversations that flow so smoothly on the phone proved tricky to navigate. “What do you enjoy in life?” Jasienski asked one resident, Éliane Le Bras, 88. “Walking,” she said dryly. “But I can’t walk anymore.”Still, Le Bras lit up when the conversation turned to her great-grandchildren, and listened closely to a poem by the early 20th-century writer Anna de Noailles. “It’s nice,” she concluded. “A woman wrote this?”After the visit, Jasienski said that working on the consultations had been a unique experience for him as an actor. “The verdict lands immediately,” he said. “When you go back to the stage, you’ve learned a lot.”And while in some ways the consultations are more impromptu therapy than theater, now has been the right time for artists to embrace social responsibility, Demarcy-Mota said.“We need a new alliance between health care, theater, culture and education,” he said. “It’s time to take care of one another.”Dimitra Kontou’s uniform includes the logo of the Théâtre de la Ville.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Late Night Laughs Off Mike Pence’s Renewed Loyalty to Trump

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBest of Late NightLate Night Laughs Off Mike Pence’s Renewed Loyalty to Trump“I don’t know where the line is between forgiving and being a doormat, but Mike Pence crossed it a long time ago,” Trevor Noah said.“Staying loyal after he sent a mob to kill you?” marveled Trevor Noah. “Man, that shows how committed Mike Pence is to his principles: he won’t even abort a friendship.”Credit…Comedy CentralFeb. 25, 2021, 1:41 a.m. ETWelcome 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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.That’s a Good Boy“Obedience school seems to be working well for Mike Pence, who has apparently patched things up with his former owner, Donald Trump,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Wednesday night, after Mike Pence was reported to have told a group of conservative lawmakers that he and Donald Trump still had a “close personal friendship.”“Staying loyal after he sent a mob to kill you? Man, that shows how committed Mike Pence is to his principles: he won’t even abort a friendship,” Trevor Noah said.“I believe Mike Pence has spent the last month doing a little something called ‘weighing his options’ and found that it would be better to be friends with Donald Trump.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I guess at this point, there’s nothing Trump can do to Pence that would make Pence turn on him. They basically have the same relationship that we have with our Alexa: ‘Ugh, Alexa, I hate you. I wish you would die!’ [imitating Alexa] ‘I’m sorry you feel that way. Is there anything I can help you with?’” — TREVOR NOAH“And I don’t know where the line is between forgiving and being a doormat, but Mike Pence crossed it a long time ago. I mean, yeah, the Bible says to turn the other cheek, but at the same time, one of the Ten Commandments is ‘Thou shall not be a [expletive].’” — TREVOR NOAH“You know what would be fun? If I were Donald Trump, I’d announce that I need a kidney, and I’d make all of these guys — Lindsey Graham, Rudy, Mike Pence — I’d make them all give me one kidney to choose which one I like best.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Keep on Truckin’ Edition)“There’s exciting news in the world of mail delivery. Yeah, brace yourself. The U.S. Postal Service just unveiled their new fleet of delivery trucks, and the future is adorable.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“They asked the designers to come up with something that looks unremarkable and yet vaguely unsettling. And I think they succeeded.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“They’ve already spent $482 million on testing and designing it. Wasn’t the post office bankrupt like four months ago? Now they’re buying new cars? It’s like a bad brother-in-law or something.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That thing’s about to be the first mail truck to go on the TV show ‘Botched.’” — JIMMY FALLON“That thing’s just a couple eyeballs away from a Pixar movie. You really get the feeling that engine is going to be going ‘pucket-a, pucket-a, pucket-a, pucket-a.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But of course there’s a controversy. Many of the new trucks will be electric, but not all of them, and ‘the precise mix has already elicited criticism from environmentalists.’ I understand their concern — I mean, you want the greenest vehicle possible when you’re delivering thousands of pounds of Amazon Rainforest that are now Amazon boxes.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth Watching“Jimmy Kimmel Live” tried to find someone — anyone — at the Farmers Market in Los Angeles who could properly identify Kamala Harris’s husband.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe actress Regina King, a Golden Globe nominee, will chat with Stephen Colbert on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutEddie Murphy, left, at home in the Hollywood Hills and Arsenio Hall in Los Angeles. “There’s never been a period where we haven’t been friends,” Murphy said.Credit…Photographs by Brad Ogbonna for The New York TimesThe longtime friends and co-stars Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall talk about their careers and the new sequel to “Coming to America.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More