Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 63 Shares109 Views

    in Television

    Welcome to the Skype Pandemic

    National crises are often identified by the media innovations they engender. The Persian Gulf war of 1991 was the turning point for CNN, the 10-year-old cable-news network that broadcast live the first United States bombs falling in Baghdad. The 2016 presidential contest will forever be remembered as the election when Twitter and other social media platforms became an irresistible force in national politics.Our current public-health crisis may well become known as the Skype pandemic.The outbreak of webcam interviews — on Skype and FaceTime, as well as other web-conferencing apps like Zoom and Cisco Webex — has nearly matched the spread of the coronavirus itself. With social distancing a necessity, familiar talking heads — political pundits, members of Congress, New York Times reporters — who used to show up in well-lit studios, dressed in presentable office attire and dabbed with a little makeup, now appear as fuzzy, low-resolution images transmitted from their home laptops and iPads.It is, to be sure, a triumph of journalistic improvisation: the media’s creative, seat-of-the-pants response to a national crisis that has thrown out all the rules. Yet if the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan told us, it’s time to ask whether all this rough-and-ready video journalism is affecting how we’re viewing the current pandemic.One thing, at least, is hard to dispute: It almost surely contributed to the bump in President Trump’s approval ratings late last month.Despite his early dithering on the looming pandemic, Mr. Trump quickly embraced the media advantages offered him. He appears each afternoon at a press briefing in front of live TV cameras — well lit, in focus, hair coifed and complexion bronzed to its usual otherworldly glow. (Are his makeup people wearing masks?)He looks, at least superficially, confident, in control, presidential. He gets to interrupt reporters and talk over questions he doesn’t like. His TV ratings, as he likes to brag, are excellent.Joe Biden, by contrast, has to sit in a makeshift studio in his Delaware basement, doing remote interviews marred, at least early on, by an annoying time delay that made the presumptive Democratic nominee seem even more tentative and fumbling than usual. Some of the technical problems have been resolved (though not Mr. Biden’s meandering responses to questions he should have down pat by now).Still, he’s stuck in a medium that makes him look less like a commanding chief executive than a homebound grandpa. Which, of course, he is.Yet Mr. Biden’s sessions look polished next to some of the scrappy webcam interviews that are now ubiquitous on cable news: balky, lo-fi video; tinny, distorted, often out-of-sync sound; washed-out faces that can make distinguished scientists look like extras in “The Blair Witch Project.” And then there’s that familiar bane of satellite-TV interviews, a time delay that can turn the most sobering conversation into an awkward, overly polite Alphonse and Gaston comedy routine.The profusion of webcam interviews has had a democratizing effect that cuts both ways. On the one hand, the homemade, catch-as-catch-can interviews with doctors, nurses and E.M.S. workers on the front lines help to convey a sense of urgency; it’s the sort of gritty video we usually get only from reporters in war zones or families trying to ride out Category 5 hurricanes.On the other hand, in a more subliminal way, the flattening of the journalistic curve may be muddling the message. When every medical expert looks no different from your garden-variety conspiracy theorist on the internet (or your Aunt Martha grappling with a FaceTime video call), the voices of authority become a little harder to distinguish, and to heed.Yet to understand how the webcam is affecting our response to the pandemic, it helps to go back to Mr. McLuhan — that brilliant, sometimes confounding guru of the media age — and his famous distinction between “hot” and “cool” media. A “hot” medium (like movies or radio) delivers a high-definition sensory experience, allowing the user to simply sit back and absorb. Television, by contrast, is a “cool” medium; it delivers a comparatively low-definition image, and so requires more participation by the viewer to fill in the missing data and complete the picture.It would be interesting to see how Mr. McLuhan would account for the changes in technology since the early 1960s, when he published his seminal work, “Understanding Media.” The 19-inch, black-and-white Sylvania has been replaced by a 58-inch, high-definition TV, which now delivers images not that far removed from what we see in the movie theater. The “cool” TV medium has heated up considerably and been succeeded by an even cooler medium, the internet.Yet the Skypeing of TV news is, in terms of the sensory experience, a reversion to the television of an earlier era — the days of rabbit ears and fuzzy images, wavering signals and reaching for the vertical hold. And the upshot may be something like what Mr. McLuhan envisioned. “TV will not work as background,” he asserted. “It engages you. You have to be with it.”We’re engaged now, of course, because we’re stuck in the house and inundated with scary images of what it means to go outside. But those crude, herky-jerky webcam interviews may be having a greater impact simply because they force the viewer to do some work: to complete the image, to decipher the audio, to participate in a way we don’t with the normal diet of slick cable-news interviews and round tables.The webcam interview isn’t only affecting the message; it is demystifying the messenger. Familiar talking heads, forced out of the studio, now sit in their living room or home office (bookshelves usually behind them), blurrier and sounding like they’re inside an oil drum — but more relatable, like well-informed neighbors.“When I was a kid,” said Jimmy Kimmel, one of several late-night hosts now doing their shows from home, “I used to pretend I was hosting a talk show in my kitchen. And finally that dream has come true.”What we’re living through now is more like a nightmare. But it will eventually end, and the question is whether the media’s transformation will too. The cable-news hosts and their guests will almost certainly return to their slick, well-appointed studios. But the networks may see the webcam interview as a money-saving opportunity, no camera operator required, and it will continue to flourish.How will that affect the medium, and the message? Our current crisis will have to be well past before that fuzzy picture gets clearer.Richard Zoglin (@rzoglin) is a contributor to Time magazine and the author, most recently, of “Elvis in Vegas.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

  • 75 Shares99 Views

    in Theater

    A Cast Album I Love: ‘Hair’

    Recently, The Times’s co-chief theater critics put together a musical cast recording starter kit for those of us stuck at home — 10 cast albums they’d take with them to a desert island. We asked some of their fellow critics to pick one cast album each and extol its pleasures. On Wednesday, Laura Collins-Hughes wrote about the Shakespeare in the Park production of “Twelfth Night.”I first heard “Hair” as a teenager, because an aunt had the original Broadway cast recording on vinyl. I had no idea what the story was about, and didn’t care — I just loved the songs.Since then I’ve listened to “Hair” more than all my other cast albums put together, and possibly more than any other record, period. I’ve listened to it on headphones at home and on road trips, tinny car speakers straining at high volume. I’ve listened to it in order and on shuffle. I’ve listened to it while deep in absorbed concentration and while yelling back the best lines.I watched the 1979 Milos Forman film adaptation and liked it well enough, but it was seeing the show live for the first time — in 2008, at the Delacorte Theater — that secured “Hair” in my personal pantheon.Why it’s on repeat“Hair” is often said, somewhat accusingly, to be stuck in the 1960s. But while it certainly is of that time, the show is also outside of it, transcending the decades thanks to its evocation of timeless themes of repression and liberation, anger and joy. The score is intricately crafted yet feels instinctive, reactive, passionate.“Hair” works so beautifully because it’s a bit of a freak accident, resulting as it did from the unlikely meeting of Galt MacDermot, a seemingly strait-laced Canadian-born composer who played jazz with interpolations of African music, with the lyricists and book writers James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who came from the East Village’s wild theater scene. More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in Theater

    A Lot Has Changed in 50 Years, Off Paris Stages and On

    PARIS — Theater rarely pauses to mull over its past. What happens when the curtain rises next is the main preoccupation of stage artists and critics. Keeping up with the huge number of productions on offer is usually a Sisyphean task, leaving little room for historical perspective.Yet with theaters currently shut around the world, time has opened up to look back. As luck would have it, the National Audiovisual Institute, which archives all French television and radio programs, began a new streaming platform, Madelen, shortly after a stay-at-home order was issued here in March.Madelen gives subscribers a chance to watch theatrical productions that were taped for television from the 1950s on. While the platform is clunky to use, with no advanced search options and a limited catalog for now, it offers glimpses of theater’s early popularity on the small screen. And a sample of recordings from exactly half a century ago provides a window onto an onstage world that unfolded at a much slower pace than plays today.As a snapshot of theater in France at the time, Madelen’s selection is skewed. It leans heavily toward what is known as boulevard theater, a mix of popular comedy, vaudeville and melodrama. Some of the most influential French directors of the 1960s and ’70s, from Roger Planchon to Ariane Mnouchkine and Patrice Chéreau, as well as the overtly political stage works that echoed the events of 1968, don’t get a look-in. (Programming decisions played a part, but some artists simply didn’t believe in TV as a medium for their work.)Still, it is a welcome opportunity to re-evaluate what has long been considered a lesser genre. Theater history tends to erase boulevard productions in favor of more innovative and radical forms, yet most of the televised plays on Madelen averaged 15 million to 20 million viewers in 1970. They were shown on a popular program, “At the Theater Tonight” (“Au Théâtre Ce Soir”), that introduced the Paris theater scene to the rest of the French population. Under the guise of entertainment, they also spun well-crafted stories out of the era’s social mores.What do they have in common? An obsession with death, crime and extramarital affairs, for starters. The stakes of domestic entanglements, all staged with conventional, realistic sets and costumes, are certainly heightened: Even the comedies are rife with casual death threats.André Roussin’s “The Husband, the Wife and Death” (“Le Mari, la Femme et la Mort”), for instance, features a woman looking to hasten her husband’s death so she can inherit a secret fortune. In Jean Guitton’s “I Loved Too Much” (“Je L’Aimais Trop”), which takes place in a florist’s store, an unfaithful lover is shot not once but twice. At one point, the store’s oldest employee sighs, “No one believes in love, everyone uses it, and here is the result: a game of massacre.”Cheating is portrayed as both a cardinal sin and a commonplace occurrence, for men and women alike. Robert Lamoureux’s “Heres Comes the Brunette” (“La Brune Que Voilà”) alternately lionizes and punishes its hero, Germain, played by Lamoureux, for having four lovers at once. When the husband of one woman threatens to kill him if he doesn’t leave his wife alone, yet declines to give his name, Germain is forced to break up with all four women just in case: a comeuppance that leads him back to monogamy.These 1970 productions reinforce how deeply social context shapes our storytelling expectations. “The Old Fogies Are Doing Fine” (“Les Croulants Se Portent Bien”), a 1959 comedy by Roger Ferdinand, initially sets up a generational clash when a divorced father in his late 40s introduces his 20-year-old fiancée to his adult children, who are the same age. To get back at him, they decide to find older partners, too: The daughter (played by a future star, Nathalie Baye) seduces her father’s best friend, while the son goes out with a 40-year-old widow. I naïvely expected the characters to conclude that the age difference was too great for all involved. Wrong: Ferdinand ends up extolling the virtues of dating a much older partner.Par for the course, sadly, is the casual sexism woven into these productions, all written and directed by men save for a stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None.” The age difference between male actors and their younger, more attractive stage partners is often stark. Women are cast as superficial housewives and airheads, easily overwhelmed by their emotions. In “The Husband, the Wife and Death,” a man even says to his wife, without a trace of irony: “I might rape you afterward, but it’s part of ordinary life.”Elsewhere, women are also feared. “What About Hell, Isabelle?” (“Et l’Enfer, Isabelle?”), written by Jacques Deval in 1963, pits an investigative judge against a presumed “black widow,” the self-assured Isabelle Angelier (the superb Françoise Christophe), whose husbands keep dying shortly after naming her a life insurance beneficiary.This slow-burning detective story would probably never make it to the stage today. The static set of the judge’s nondescript office and the long exchanges between the main characters would be seen as lacking variety and energy. Audiences have grown used to rapid-fire scene changes, and crime stories are told very differently in current movies and TV series. Yet “What About Hell, Isabelle?” shows, by fleshing out the characters’ psychology without quite solving its central mystery, that there is value in a more old-fashioned approach, too.In 1970, there was relatively little of the frantic movement that often fills the stage nowadays. The technical constraints of filming at the time may have played a part in how these productions come across, but the moments of silence and stillness also allow viewers to process the action differently. Three knocks are even heard every time the curtain is about to rise, an old French stage tradition that has fallen by the wayside, and it is also a joy to hear the clear, occasionally overemphatic diction of this generation of French actors.There is at least one play on Madelen that is ripe for a contemporary spoof: “Frédéric,” another work by the prolific Lamoureux, who was a star of the boulevard stage for several decades. It is an absurd, over-the-top spy story about a man, Frédéric, who has the ability to recite perfectly from memory every page he has ever read. When he accidentally reads an atomic physicist’s top-secret formula, he instantly becomes a sought-after commodity in an international arms race.A self-involved antihero, Frédéric is reminiscent of Jean Dujardin’s role as the James Bond surrogate in “OSS 117,” a parody French film franchise that began in 2006; a tongue-in-cheek revival of “Frédéric” (minus some racist lines that have aged poorly) might well be similarly entertaining. When theaters reopen, there will be plenty of plays about our current ordeal. Perhaps a few unexpected blasts from the past would be welcome, too. More

  • 125 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    What’s on TV Thursday: ‘The Willoughbys’ and ‘Will & Grace’

    What’s StreamingTHE WILLOUGHBYS (2020) Stream on Netflix. “If you love stories about families that stick together and love each other through thick and thin, and it all ends happily ever after — this isn’t the film for you, OK?” That line is delivered by the narrator in the opening of this animated movie (the voice, fittingly, is Ricky Gervais’s). Adapted from a satirical children’s book by Lois Lowry, “The Willoughbys” concerns neglected siblings (voiced by Will Forte, Alessia Cara and Seán Cullen) who hatch a plan to get rid of their comically inattentive parents (Jane Krakowski and Martin Short). The ensuing story involves chases, betrayals and many nods to famous children’s books — including the presence of a friendly nanny (Maya Rudolph) and a candy man (Terry Crews). “Though it tends to feel disjointed as a whole,” Natalia Winkelman wrote in her review of the movie for The New York Times, “‘The Willoughbys’ thrives when it embraces its grim plot and lets mischief reign.”CUNNINGHAM (2019) Stream on Hulu; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Audiences who missed this documentary about the influential choreographer Merce Cunningham when it hit theaters late last year have new reasons to consider watching, given that live dance is on hiatus. “Cunningham,” directed by Alla Kovgan, mixes new filmed performances of old works (from 1942-1972) with archival footage, mostly eschewing a traditional biographical overview of Cunningham’s life and instead exploring the work itself. “The well-chosen selections in ‘Cunningham’ reproduce the variety of a Cunningham Event, and give the Cunningham experience of luminous instants,” Brian Seibert wrote in his review for The Times. Seibert called it “an excellent introduction to a great body of work that can be hard to get a handle on” — though home viewers will miss the 3-D technology that the film used in theaters.GOLDIE (2020) Rent on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu. The fashion model Slick Woods plays a Bronx teenager in this drama, Woods’s film debut. After her mother (Marsha Stephanie Blake) is arrested, Goldie (Woods) takes charge of her two preteen half sisters, searching for stability for them while pursuing her own dream of becoming a successful dancer. “Colorful as a box of Skittles, ‘Goldie’ (written and directed by the Dutch filmmaker Sam de Jong) turns its section of the Bronx into a world of pizza slices and hand-to-mouth cash deals,” Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times. She added that Woods “gives Goldie a steel spine and a feisty resourcefulness.”What’s on TVWILL & GRACE 9 p.m. on NBC. When the original run of “Will & Grace” wrapped up in 2006, it ended its story with its titular best friends, Will Truman (Eric McCormack) and Grace Adler (Debra Messing), each married, and left them to live an apparent happily ever after. The show was revived in 2017. Wednesday night’s series finale will be the end of the new story line — and an answer to how to end a sitcom twice. More

  • 100 Shares159 Views

    in Television

    Jack McBrayer’s Island Vacation Is in His Mind

    Jack McBrayer has mastered the mind trip: the ability to transport himself anywhere but here. Which makes “Escape From Virtual Island,” a new Audible scripted podcast from John Lutz, his former “30 Rock” and improv colleague, a good fit. The premise: In 2038, guests live out their wildest fantasies through virtual reality at a South Pacific resort, where Beasley (voiced by McBrayer) is the long-devoted assistant to the owner (Paul Rudd). Then one adventurer gets lost in his imaginary world and needs rescuing.Recently, McBrayer was plotting a virtual escape of his own — his sun-soaked backyard in Los Angeles was standing in for a tropical island. Hummingbirds, soothing sounds and “comedy with some kindness” made his list of 10 essentials.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Saturday Cartoons and Sunday ComicsI was trying to think what were my earliest introductions to comedy, and I guess it would have been Saturday-morning cartoons. You’d have your Bugs Bunny, your Looney Tunes, your Hanna-Barbera. Then in the ’80s, every cartoon was based on a video game or a cereal or a popular show — “The Dukes of Hazzard,” Pac-Man. I eventually found myself in the world of improvisational comedy, and it reminded me of cartoons in that you could be any character that you want and you could be in any scenario that you want, and nothing mattered.When I was little, I wanted to be a cartoonist like in the funny pages. It was a Sunday-morning thing. Daddy would be reading the newspaper and then as soon as he was done with the funny pages, he’d pass them off and then I’d pass the section off to my sister. I don’t remember the last time I touched a real newspaper, but I love cartoons and will until the day I die.2. Hawaiian Music on PandoraSometimes you just have to pretend you’re on vacation, find the escape that you need and create it however you can. And for me it’s putting on a Hawaiian music station and relaxing and acting like you’re at a resort. I got first introduced to Hawaiian music when we were shooting “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” They had that piped into the hotel 24/7, and for some people I’m sure that would make them crazy. For me it was like a scalp massage. So on my most frenzied days, I’ll find myself pulling that up on the speaker system and just going back to 2007, laughing with Jason Segel and Mila Kunis. More

  • 75 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    Why We Laugh During a Pandemic

    “Unreasonably dark joke,” read a coronavirus meme circulating on social media in recent weeks. “Shouldn’t we wait until after the pandemic to fill out the census?”The joke is dark, yes. But is it any darker than countless other coronavirus memes out there?Even more pointed is a spoof movie poster for “Weekend at Bernie’s,” the 1989 film comedy about two buddies toting around a dead man on their partying adventures, called “Weekend at Boris.” It cast as the corpse Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, who at that point was still in intensive care for Covid-19, as the corpse.Since the pandemic took hold, the internet has been awash with coronavirus-centric joke memes, Twitter wisecracks and self-produced comedy sketches shot with smartphones in shelter-in-place kitchens and living rooms. And that’s not counting what’s happening in private conversations during quarantine.Laughing while others die may seem inappropriate, even tasteless, like concentration camp prisoners cracking jokes during the Holocaust. But in fact many did, according to a 2017 documentary, “The Last Laugh.”Throughout history, humor has played a role in the darkest times, as a psychological salve and shared release. Large swaths of the population are living in isolation, instructed to eye with suspicion any stranger who wanders within six feet. And coronavirus jokes have become a form of contagion themselves, providing a remaining thread to the outside world for the isolated — and perhaps to sanity itself.But who, or what, is an appropriate target for satire during a pandemic?You can’t laugh at the sick or dying, obviously, except in the main. “A year from now, you’ll all be laughing about this virus,” reads one recent meme. “Not all of you, obviously.”The virus itself deserves scorn and mockery, being the source of all this misery, although it is an elusive target, being inanimate and invisible. (“I love being outdoors, crowded places and food markets,” read a fake Tinder profile for “Coronavirus, 29.”)As late-night hosts like Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah have shown, politicians who seem to prioritize votes over lives are easily mocked. So too are other perceived villains of the pandemic that require no microscope to see: six-foot-space-cushion violators, say, or toilet-paper hoarders.“What’s next?” Mr. Noah joked in a segment a few weeks ago about people getting into fistfights at supermarkets over jumbo packs of Charmin. “Are people going to be running around Walmart, like, ‘Ahhh, where’s the car wax?’”Judas on ZoomIn many ways, we are all our own best source of humor, racked with anxiety as we sit cloistered at home, surrounded by either too few people or too many. With little contact with the outside world beyond our smartphones, our jokey coronavirus memes and videos are like the S.O.S. messages that a bearded castaway fashions in the sand with rocks and seashells. More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    What’s on TV Wednesday: ‘She Walks with Apes’ and ‘Fauda’

    What’s on TVSHE WALKS WITH APES (2020) 9 p.m. on BBC America. “As a kid, I was really desperate to find strong women role models that I could look up to,” Iulia Badescu, a Canadian primatologist, says in this documentary. She went through a Joan of Arc phase, and a Queen Elizabeth I phase. And then she found Jane Goodall. The documentary looks at the legacies of Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas, three women who found fame doing groundbreaking primatology work in the 20th century. It explores the influence of their studies on three younger researchers, including Badescu. The documentary is narrated by the actress Sandra Oh.JANE GOODALL: THE HOPE (2020) 9 p.m. on National Geographic. For a deeper dive on Goodall, see this new National Geographic documentary, a follow-up to “Jane” (2017). “Jane” focused on Goodall’s formative years in the 1960s; “The Hope” looks at Goodall’s activist work from the 1980s onward.SEAT AT THE TABLE WITH ANAND GIRIDHARADAS 10 p.m. on Vice TV. The writer Anand Giridharadas, a former columnist for The New York Times, hosts this new weekly talk show, which covers news and culture. Wednesday night’s debut episode is set to include interviews with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Seth MacFarlane, plus a performance by Taylor Mac.What’s StreamingFAUDA Stream on Netflix. Doron Kavillio, the Israeli counterterrorism agent played by Lior Raz in this action series, spent the previous season of the show hunting a powerful ISIS follower — a story line that allowed the series to lean heavily into issues of politics and religion. The show has a new lead writer, Noah Stollman (“Our Boys”), for its third season, but the setup is familiar: It drops Doron in the middle of a dangerous situation freighted with the baggage of current events. The story begins with Doron undercover in a Palestinian village, where he mentors a young boxer (Ala Dakka) while hunting the boxer’s cousin, a Hamas operative. “As always with ‘Fauda,’ the story spirals out in increasingly messy strands of betrayal and violence,” Mike Hale wrote in a recent article in The Times.BUTT BOY (2020) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Yes, you read the title correctly. Yes, the movie is as weird as it sounds. This absurd dark comedy from the indie filmmaker Tyler Cornack revolves around a middle-aged man, Chip (Cornack), who develops a mysterious impulse that involves objects and his fanny. The situation escalates after Chip is asked by his local A.A. group to sponsor Russell (Tyler Rice), a detective working on a missing person case. Russell begins to suspect that the solution to his search lies within Chip. “No matter how weird or tasteless it becomes, the movie refuses to be dismissed as a juvenile provocation,” Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times. “It’s too clever for that, too sympathetic toward addiction and grief, and too understanding of the loneliness of the unloved.” More

  • 100 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    Everyone You Know Just Signed Up for Netflix

    Netflix has become one of the nation’s all-around distractions, acting as both a supercharged nanny and a nightly balm during the coronavirus crisis.It’s not hard to imagine why. With an almost bottomless well of movies and serials that can be watched on almost any device, it’s the kind of service that would be dreamed up by someone stranded on a desert island — or stuck at home during a pandemic.More than 15.7 million people signed up for Netflix in the first three months of the year, when the coronavirus started to disrupt daily life around the world. That was a record for the streamer, according to its first quarter earnings announcement on Tuesday.Netflix has 182.8 million subscribers, making it one of the world’s largest entertainment services. It added 2.3 million in the United States and Canada in the first quarter for a total of 69.9 million, and added 13.5 million internationally.The results offer a vivid snapshot of how the coronavirus has affected the streaming industry, signifying the first real test of how durable online video has been during the pandemic. Streaming has also become one of Hollywood’s few lifelines at a time when the entertainment industry is at a virtual standstill. More