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      A24, the Indie Film Studio, Buys New York’s Cherry Lane Theater

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      The studio’s first venture into live performance follows the move by Audible, Amazon’s audio subsidiary, to stage works at the nearby Minetta Lane Theater.A24, the independent film and television studio barreling into next weekend’s Academy Awards with a boatload of Oscar nominations, is making an unexpected move into live performance, purchasing a small Off Broadway theater in New York’s West Village.The studio, which until now has focused on making movies, television shows and podcasts, has purchased the Cherry Lane Theater for $10 million, and plans to present plays as well as other forms of live entertainment there, in addition to the occasional film screening.A24, whose films include the leading Oscar contender “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” is not the first film studio to make such a move: the Walt Disney Company has been presenting stage productions at Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theater, which it leases from the state and city, since 1997. But Disney, of course, is an entertainment industry behemoth that has mastered the art of multiplatform storytelling.A more comparable move, perhaps, was that by Audible, an Amazon audio subsidiary that since 2018 has been leasing the Minetta Lane Theater, in Greenwich Village, for live productions which it then records and offers on its digital platform. And Netflix, the streaming juggernaut, has in recent years taken over several cinemas, including the Paris Theater in New York, as well as the Egyptian and Bay theaters in Los Angeles.The A24 acquisition, coming at a time when many theaters are still struggling to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, suggests a vote of confidence in live performance. A24 plans to present some events celebrating Cherry Lane’s centennial this spring, and then to close the theater for renovations before beginning full-scale programming next year.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.Much remains uncertain about how the company intends to use the theater. A24 declined to make anyone available to speak on the record about the acquisition, but an official there said that the company had not yet decided whether it would develop work for the stage, or present work developed by others. The official, who was granted anonymity to describe the company’s plans, said that the studio hoped the theater would allow it to strengthen existing relationships with writers and performers who work on stage and screen, and to develop new relationships with comedians and theater artists.A24 plans to retain the theater’s existing staff while adding to it with its own team, the official said, and as part of the renovation it plans to install technology so the theater can be used for film screenings.The official said A24’s theater venture is a partnership with Taurus Investment Holdings.“I really believe my theater is going into the right hands,” said Angelina Fiordellisi, who has owned the theater since 1996. “They love to develop and produce the work of emerging writers, and a lot of their writers are playwrights. I can’t imagine a better way to bring future life to the theater.”Fiordellisi, 68, has been trying to sell the theater for some time. “I don’t want to work that hard anymore,” she said, “and I want to spend more time with my family.”The purchase, which was previously reported by Curbed, includes three attached properties, including a 179-seat theater, a 60-seat theater and eight apartments, on the Village’s picturesque, curving Commerce Street. The Cherry Lane, in a 19th-century building that was a brewery and a box factory before being converted to theatrical use in 1923, bills itself as the city’s longest continually running Off Broadway theater.In 2021, Fiordellisi agreed to sell the property to the Lucille Lortel Theater for $11 million, but the sale fell apart. Last week, Lortel announced that it had spent $5.3 million to purchase a three-story carriage house in Chelsea, where it plans to open a 61-seat theater in 2025. The Lortel organization also has a 295-seat theater in the West Village.The Cherry Lane will now be a for-profit, commercial venture; Fiordellisi had operated it through a nonprofit, occasionally presenting work that she developed and more often renting it to nonprofit and commercial producers. Fiordellisi said she will convert her nonprofit to a foundation that will give grants to playwrights and small theater companies. More

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      Review: Chris Rock’s ‘Selective Outrage’ Strikes Back

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      A year after Will Smith slapped him at the Oscars, Rock responded fiercely in a new stand-up special, Netflix’s first experiment in live entertainment.One year later, Chris Rock slapped back. Hard.It was certainly not as startling as Will Smith hitting him at the Oscars, but his long-awaited response, in his new Netflix stand-up special “Selective Outrage” on Saturday night, had moments that felt as emotional, messy and fierce. It was the least rehearsed, most riveting material in an uneven hour.Near the end, Rock even botched a key part of one joke, getting a title of a movie wrong. Normally, such an error would have been edited out, but since this was the first live global event in the history of Netflix, Rock could only stop, call attention to it and tell the joke again. It messed up his momentum, but the trade-off might have been worth it, since the flub added an electric spontaneity and unpredictability that was a drawing card.At 58, Rock is one of our greatest stand-ups, a perfectionist whose material, once it appeared in a special, always displayed a meticulous sense of control. He lost it here, purposely, flashing anger as he insulted Smith, offering a theory of the case of what really happened at the Academy Awards after he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair, and in what will be the most controversial part of the set, laid much of the blame on her. This felt like comedy as revenge. Rock said he long loved Will Smith. “And now,” he added, pausing before referencing the new movie in which Smith plays an enslaved man, “I watch ‘Emancipation’ just to see him get whooped.”One of the reasons Netflix remains the leading stand-up platform has been its ability to create attention-getting events. No other streamer comes close. Through a combination of razzle dazzle and Rolodex spinning, the streaming service packaged this special more like a major sporting event than a special, a star-studded warm-up act to the Oscars next week.It began with an awkward preshow hosted by Ronny Chieng, who soldiered through by poking fun at the marketing around him. “We’re doing a comedy show on Saturday night — live,” he said, before sarcastically marveling at this “revolutionary” innovation. An all-star team of comics (Ali Wong, Leslie Jones, Jerry Seinfeld), actors (Matthew McConaughey) and music stars (Paul McCartney, Ice-T) hyped up the proceedings, featuring enough earnest tributes for a lifetime achievement award. As if this weren’t enough puffery, Netflix had the comedians Dana Carvey and David Spade host a panel of more celebrations posing as post-show analysis.This was unnecessary, since Netflix already had our attention by having Rock signed to do a special right after he was on the receiving end of one of the most notorious bad reviews of a joke in the history of television. Countless people weighed in on the slap, most recently the actor and comic Marlon Wayans, whose surprisingly empathetic new special, “God Loves Me,” is an entire hour about the incident from someone who knows all the participants. HBO Max releasing that in the last week was its own counterprogramming.Until now, Rock has said relatively little about the Oscars, telling a few jokes on tour, which invariably got reported in the press. I’m guessing part of the reason he wanted this special to air live was to hold onto an element of surprise. Rock famously said that he always believed a special should be special. And he has done so in previous shows by moving his comedy in a more personal direction. “Tamborine,” an artful, intimate production shot at the BAM Harvey theater, focused on his divorce. This one, shot in Baltimore, had a grander, more old-fashioned vibe, with reaction shots alternating with him pacing the stage in his signature commanding cadence.Dressed all in white, his T-shirt and jeans hanging loosely off a lanky frame, and wearing a shiny bracelet and necklace with the Prince symbol, Rock started slowly with familiar bits about easily bruised modern sensibilities, the hollowness of social media and woke signaling. He skewered the preening of companies like Lululemon that market their lack of racism while charging $100 for yoga pants. Most people, he says, would “prefer $20 racist yoga pants.”Rock’s special, shot in Baltimore, had a grander, more old-fashioned vibe.Kirill Bichutsky/NetflixIf there’s one consistent thread through Rock’s entire career, it’s following the money, how economics motivates even love and social issues. On abortion, he finds his way to the financial angle, advising women: “If you have to pay for your own abortion, you should have an abortion.”A commanding theater performer who sets up bits as well as anyone, Rock picked up momentum midway through, while always hinting at the Smith material to come, with a reoccurring refrain of poking fun at Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z before making clear it’s just for fun: “Last thing I need is another mad rapper.” Another running theme is his contempt for victimhood. His jokes about Meghan Markle are very funny, mocking her surprise that the royal family is racist, terming them its originators, the “Sugarhill Gang of racism.”On tour, his few jokes about Smith were once tied to his points about victimhood. But here, he follows one of his most polished and funny jokes, comparing the dating prospects of Jay-Z and Beyoncé if they weren’t stars but worked at Burger King, with a long, sustained section on the Oscars that closes the show. Here, he offers his theory on Will Smith, which is essentially that the slap was an act of displacement, shifting his anger from his wife cheating on him and broadcasting it onto Rock. The comic says his joke was never really the issue. “She hurt him way more than he hurt me,” Rock said, using his considerable powers of description to describe the humiliation of Smith in a manner that seemed designed to do it again.There’s a comic nastiness to Rock’s insults, some of which is studied, but other times appeared to be the product of his own bottled-up anger. In this special, Rock seemed more raw than usual, sloppier, cursing more often and less precisely. This was a side of him you hadn’t seen before. The way his fury became directed at Pinkett Smith makes you wonder if this was also a kind of displacement. Going back into the weeds of Oscar history, Rock traced his conflict with her and Smith to when he said she wanted Rock to quit as Oscar host in 2016 because Smith was not nominated for the movie “Concussion” (the title that he mangled).That her boycotting that year’s Oscars was part of a larger protest against the Academy for not nominating Black artists went unsaid, implying it was merely a pretext. Rock often establishes his arguments with the deftness and nuance of a skilled trial lawyer, but he’s not trying to give a fair, fleshed out version of events. He’s out for blood. There’s a coldness here that is bracing. Describing his jokes about Smith’s wife at the ceremony in 2016, he put it bluntly: “She started it. I finished it.” But, of course, as would become obvious years later, he didn’t.Did he finish it in this special? We’ll see, but I think we’re in for another cycle of discourse as we head into the Academy Awards next week.At one point, Rock said there are four ways people can get attention in our culture: “Showing your ass,” being infamous, being excellent or playing the victim. It’s a good list, but this special demonstrates a conspicuous omission: Nothing draws a crowd like a fight. More

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      Two Histories of the Scandal-Soaked Academy Awards

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      On the eve of Hollywood’s big, if diminished, night, two deeply researched books dig into the scandal-soaked history of the Academy Awards.Are the Oscars history?What else to conclude from the recent publication of two erudite if waggish books about this somewhat deflated annual pageant: Michael Schulman’s OSCAR WARS: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears (Harper, 589 pp., $40) and Bruce Davis’s THE ACADEMY AND THE AWARD (Brandeis University, 485 pp., $40)? Pile these on the even fatter “Hollywood: The Oral History,” by Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson (Harper, 748 pages), and you’ll have jury-rigged something like a Norton Anthology of American Moviedom.There have been plenty of Academy annals before, of course: detailed compendiums, official and not; glossy adornments for the coffee table; and at least one prose investigation of its increasingly byzantine fashion system. But these often felt like sideshows, guidebooks: boosterish accessories to a main event that is now struggling to regain and maintain its centrality in international culture.With fewer than 10 million people in 2021 watching a telecast that once commanded five times that (a few more did tune in last year; viewership spiking after The Slap), and the box office for art films hardly afire, the new books land more like crisis management briefings.Things in the film industry have been bad before, they remind, and might yet get better again.There was, for example, 1934. In the middle of the Depression, reports Davis (a former Academy executive director who retired in 2011 and promptly plunged into its archives), the organization was forced to take up a collection from members, as if passing the plate in a church pew, so that the ceremony could go on.The Run-Up to the 2023 OscarsThe 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12 in Los Angeles.Asian Actors: A record number of actors of Asian ancestry were recognized with Oscar nominations this year. But historically, Asian stars have rarely been part of the awards.Hong Chau Interview: In a conversation with The Times, the actress, who is nominated for her supporting role in “The Whale,” says she still feels like an underdog.Andrea Riseborough Controversy: Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why the “To Leslie” star’s nod was controversial.The Making of ‘Naatu Naatu’: The composers and choreographer from the Indian blockbuster “RRR” explain how they created the propulsive sequence that is nominated for best song.Or 1989, widely and unfairly remembered as the Worst Oscars Ever, which Schulman, a staff writer for The New Yorker, dissects like a forensic pathologist hovering over an overdressed corpse.The ceremony had become “a big, embarrassing yawn,” and Allan Carr, the caftan-wearing producer of “Grease” known as “Glittermeister, ” was hired to zhuzh it up, which he did with a caroming live-action Snow White — uncleared with Disney — singing “Proud Mary” with her Prince Charming, played by Rob Lowe, then a leader of the Brat Pack. The gaudy opening number, with stars ducking for cover as Snow roamed the aisles, ruined Carr’s career and possibly his life. The unfortunate actress, Eileen Bowman, was coerced into signing a nondisclosure agreement that forbade her to talk about the Oscars for 13 years.“Never trust a man in a caftan,” Lowe had, in fairness, warned her.Davis, whose book is subtitled “The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” focuses on the organization’s formative years, “an early life that deserves a bildungsroman.”But he is less Thomas Mann than diligent mythbuster, calling, for example, Susan Orlean’s assertion in her biography of Rin-Tin-Tin that the dog got more votes than any other male actor at the first Awards (repeated in this newspaper) “nonsense of a high order, now inserted into the historical record utterly without evidence.” In the ballot box Davis uncovered at the Margaret Herrick Library, there were no votes for the pooch.Davis also dispels the belief that the statuette was originally nicknamed by Bette Davis — no relation — because its backside resembled that of her then-husband Harman Oscar Nelson. He makes the case rather to credit a secretary of Norwegian descent, Eleanore Lilleberg, who was tired of referring to the “gold knights in her care” as “doodads, thingamajigs, hoozits and gadgets” and mentally conjured a military veteran with dignified bearing she’d known as a girl.This version of events, if true, is apt, for in Schulman’s framing, the Oscars have long been no mere contest but brutal hand-to-hand combat. He chronicles the 1951 best actress race between Davis (for “All About Eve”) and Gloria Swanson (for “Sunset Boulevard”); they lost to Judy Holliday (“Born Yesterday”) but the first two performances both proved more enduring, show business loving no subject better than itself.He retraces the long exile of the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, perhaps the most prominent of the Hollywood Ten, blacklisted and driven behind pseudonyms for defying the House Un-American Activities Committee; credited and awarded for “Roman Holiday” only posthumously (his widow’s cat, satisfyingly, scratched up the thingamajig’s head).And no book called “Oscar Wars” could neglect how Harvey Weinstein, currently facing life in prison for his sex crimes, made the campaign nuclear in 1999 with “Shakespeare in Love.” The reign of this titan (and his eventual topple) was for the nation-state of Hollywood as consequential as Nixon’s for the U.S. government.He “made the Oscars dirty,” Schulman writes, using tricks like buying ads suggesting Miramax’s “The Piano” had won best picture at the preliminary critics’ awards (with “runner-up” in tiny print); relentlessly wooing senior citizens; parties, swag, ballot-commandeering and bad-mouthing his opponents. He even brought Daniel Day-Lewis to Washington to help get the American With Disabilities Act passed as a boost for “My Left Foot.”Along with the envelope, some context, please: Scandal has always beset Hollywood. Indeed, both authors note that the Academy was founded to raise the tone after a series of them, most notoriously the arrest of the Paramount actor Fatty Arbuckle after a starlet died in his hotel room following an orgy. Both in their own way document the race and gender inequity endemic to the institution, and its often ham-handed attempts to course-correct.And both conjure how exciting and special this event used to feel, with all its warts and overlength, like Christmas and New Year’s rolled into one.Now, as Oscar totters toward his 95th birthday, in a ceremony to be aired Sunday, March 12, going to a theater to see something screened feels fun but increasingly antique, like hopping on a wooden roller coaster (when I suggest it as a recreational activity to my teenagers, they look at me like I’m the MGM lion).It’s not just the pictures that have gotten small, as Swanson playing Norma Desmond declared — they’ve gotten really small, as we’re all Ernst Lubitsches now with cameras and flattering filters in our back pockets. The ceremony to commemorate them has shrunk as well.“I’m not sure I see a way to re-establish the Academy Awards as an experience for a wide swath of the country’s, or the world’s, population,” Davis writes. “It isn’t hard to see the Oscars on a track to becoming something like the National Book Awards” — heaven forfend! — “with way more glamorous presenters.” More

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      ‘Tár’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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      ‘Everything Everywhere’ Wins Writers Guild Award, Sweeping Major Guilds

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      The victory for Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan cements the film’s front-runner status. Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking” takes the adaptation prize.The sci-fi smash “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won the original-screenplay trophy at the Writers Guild Awards on Sunday night, completing a thorough sweep of the top prizes from Hollywood’s major guilds. Only four other films have also triumphed with the Directors Guild, Producers Guild, Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild: “Argo,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “American Beauty.” All went on to win the best picture Oscar.“Writing is confusing and hard, and we felt so lost so often,” said Daniel Scheinert, who co-wrote and co-directed the twisty “Everything Everywhere” with Daniel Kwan. Scheinert praised everyone who had read an early draft of the screenplay, then added, “Thank you to our therapists.”Meanwhile, “Women Talking” prevailed in the adapted-screenplay race, topping competition that included “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”The “Woman Talking” writer-director, Sarah Polley, praised her representatives for standing by her as she segued from an acting career that included films like “The Sweet Hereafter” and “Dawn of the Dead.” Polley said with a laugh, “They signed me thinking I was going to be a really big movie star. Whoops!”What she really wanted to do was write, Polley explained, and her adaptation of the Miriam Toews novel about assaults in a Mennonite community has now brought her a second WGA honor (her first, for a documentary screenplay, came in 2014 for “Stories We Tell,” which she also directed.)“To be taken seriously in this way, in this room of so many amazing writers, I really can’t tell you what that means to me,” she said.The path to a best picture Oscar typically requires a screenplay win along the way, so the WGA victory for “Everything Everywhere” should only further strengthen the film’s front-runner status. Still, it wasn’t exactly a fair fight: Though the original-screenplay category on Oscar night is expected to be a two-way race between “Everything Everywhere” and Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the latter was ineligible for the WGA prize because, like many international films, it was not written under a bargaining agreement with the WGA or its sister guilds.That stipulation also kept surging BAFTA winner “All Quiet on the Western Front” out of the WGA race for adapted screenplay, clearing a safe path to victory for “Women Talking.” So while “Everything Everywhere” and “Women Talking” are coming out of the WGA ceremony with momentum, the real battle is still to come at the Oscars, and surprises may be in store.Here are the major WGA winners. For a complete list, go to wga.org.Original screenplay: “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Daniel Kwan and Daniel ScheinertAdapted screenplay: “Women Talking,” Sarah PolleyDocumentary screenplay: “Moonage Daydream,” Brett MorgenDrama series: “Severance”Comedy series: “The Bear”Limited series: “The White Lotus”New series: “Severance” More

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      Ricou Browning, Who Made the Black Lagoon Scary, Dies at 93

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      He helped bring “Flipper” to the movies and TV but was best known for his plunge in a monster suit in “Creature From the Black Lagoon.”Ricou Browning, who played the title character, or at least the underwater version of it, in one of the most enduring creature features of the 1950s, “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” died on Feb. 27 at his home in Southwest Ranches, Fla., northwest of Miami. He was 93.His daughter Renee Le Feuvre confirmed the death.Mr. Browning was 23 when Newt Perry, a promoter of various Florida attractions for whom he had worked as a teenager, asked him to show some Hollywood visitors around Wakulla Springs, a picturesque spot near Tallahassee. The entourage — which, as Mr. Browning told the story later, included Jack Arnold, the film’s director, and the cameraman Scotty Welbourne — was scouting locations for a planned movie about an underwater monster.“Scotty had his underwater camera,” Mr. Browning recalled in an interview recorded in “The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy,” a 2014 book by Tom Weaver (with David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg), “and he asked me if I would get in the water with him and swim in front of the camera so they could get some perspective.”Mr. Arnold not only liked the location; he also liked Mr. Browning. He called him days later and asked if he would want to play the creature for the underwater scenes to be shot in Florida. (An actor named Ben Chapman portrayed the monster in the scenes on land, which were filmed in California.)“We’ve tested a lot of people for this part,” Mr. Browning recalled Mr. Arnold telling him, “but I’d like to have you play the creature — I like your swimming.”Mr. Browning in a scene from “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” the first of three movies in which he played the title character. “I’d like to have you play the creature,” he recalled the film’s director telling him — “I like your swimming.”Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesIn August 1953 he was brought to California to be fitted for the suit that would turn him into the Gill Man, and six months later “Creature From the Black Lagoon” was released. It was the latest in a tradition of monster movies from Universal Studios that included “The Mummy” (1932) and “The Wolf Man” (1941), and it took its place in monster movie lore.In the film, which was released in 3-D, scientists working in the Amazon discover a creature in a lagoon that takes a shine to a female member of the party, Kay (played by Julie Adams). About 28 minutes into the film, Kay decides to go for a swim in the lagoon, and the creature, still undiscovered by the research party, swims beneath her like an underwater stalker, a scene both creepy and oddly poignant.“This scene turned it from a regular old monster movie to a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ thing,” Mr. Weaver said by email, “a big reason for the movie’s ongoing popularity.”Some critics weren’t impressed by the movie.“The proceedings above and under water were filmed in 3-D to impart an illusion of depth when viewed through polarized glasses,” A.H. Weiler wrote in The New York Times. “This adventure has no depth.”Yet the movie did decently at the box office and became a sort of cultural reference point. Mr. Browning, who had the ability to hold his breath underwater for minutes at a time, played the swimming version of the creature in two sequels, “Revenge of the Creature” (1955) and “The Creature Walks Among Us” (1956).He went on to share a story-writing credit on the 1963 film “Flipper,” about a boy who becomes friends with a dolphin, and then, the next year, was a creator of the television series of the same name and directed and helped write a number of its episodes during its three seasons. He also did some of the underwater stunt work.In an introductory essay in Mr. Weaver’s book, Ms. Adams, whose “Black Lagoon” character was played by Ginger Stanley in the underwater scenes, recalled waiting eagerly in California to see the “dailies” — footage from the day’s shooting — coming out of Florida.“The dailies were long, silent takes of him and Ginger Stanley deep in the crystal clear water of Wakulla Springs,” she wrote. “They’d swim for a while, get some air from an air hose, and then go back and resume their action. It was so exciting to see the Gill Man brought to life by Ricou’s unique swimming style, and I was captivated.”Ms. Stanley, Mr. Browning’s underwater partner in that eerie scene that helped define the film, died in January in Orlando, Fla., at 91.Ricou Ren Browning was born on Feb. 16, 1930, in Fort Pierce, Fla. His father, Clement, worked construction in the Navy, and his mother, Inez (Ricou) Browning, was a bookkeeper.He first saw Wakulla Springs as a teenager and earned some money by swimming deep in the water for the benefit of tourists in glass-bottomed boats, who would watch him plunge to depths of 80 feet and leave tips.“Some of us kids would earn 30, 40 dollars a day,” he told Mr. Weaver for his book, “and that was big, big money.”In the 1940s he also got his first taste of the movie business, appearing in several short films made in the area by Grantland Rice, who was better known as a sportswriter. In one, according to Mr. Weaver’s book, Mr. Browning is among the teenagers packed into a Model T Ford that drives into the waters of Wakulla Springs.After serving in the Air Force from 1947 to 1950, Mr. Browning returned to Florida. He was the underwater double for Forrest Tucker in “Crosswinds” (1951), an adventure story about an effort to recover gold from a sunken plane, which was filmed in Florida. He was performing in Mr. Perry’s underwater shows at Weeki Wachee, another Florida attraction, and studying physical education at Florida State University when he was recruited for “Creature From the Black Lagoon.”In his book, Mr. Weaver recounts the hit-or-miss process of coming up with the right creature costume, and the difficulties Mr. Browning had to deal with once the right look was found. One problem was that the costume was made of foam rubber, which floats.“I wore a chest plate that was thin lead,” Mr. Browning told him, as well as thigh and ankle weights.Another problem, Mr. Weaver said, was that Mr. Chapman, the actor playing the on-land version of the creature, was quite tall; in Florida, Mr. Browning had scenes with Ms. Stanley and several other stand-ins.“Ricou was average height,” Mr. Weaver said, “so short people were hired to play the hero-heroine-bad guy so that Ricou would look comparatively king-sized.”Mr. Browning’s later film work included directing the comedy “Salty” (1973), about a sea lion, and the crime drama “Mr. No Legs” (1978), about a mob enforcer who is a double amputee, as well as doing stunt work in several movies, including serving as Jerry Lewis’s underwater double in the 1959 comedy “Don’t Give Up the Ship.”Mr. Browning’s first marriage, to Margaret Kelly in 1951, ended in divorce. His second wife, Fran Ravelo, whom he married in 1977, died in 2020. In addition to his daughter Renee, he is survived by three other children from his first marriage, his sons, Kelly and Ricou Jr., and his daughter Kim Browning; 10 grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.Mr. Weaver noted that all of the other actors who portrayed monsters in the classic Universal films died some time ago.“Ricou,” he said, “had the distinction of being the last man standing.” More

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      Ricardo Darín es la cábala de Argentina en los Oscar

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      El actor ha protagonizado las cuatro películas por las que su país ha sido nominado este siglo, pero él cree que más que su talento, su mayor suerte es la confianza que otros han tenido en él.WEST HOLLYWOOD, California — Hace tiempo que la fortuna favorece a Ricardo Darín. Más que al concepto subjetivo de talento, es a la providencia, expresada como la confianza inquebrantable que tienen los demás en sus capacidades, a lo que el actor atribuye su galardonada carrera como la estrella de cine argentina más célebre en el mundo.“He tenido toda la suerte que mis padres no tuvieron como actores”, comentó durante una entrevista reciente en el hotel Sunset Tower. “Muchas veces me han valorado mucho más de lo que yo mismo me valoro, y luego yo pienso, ‘¿Será que me merezco tanto?’”.El último ejemplo de su relación con la suerte es su papel como el fiscal Julio Strassera en Argentina, 1985, un drama judicial histórico sobre el juicio a las Juntas, cuando los líderes militares fueron procesados por violaciones de los derechos humanos durante la anterior dictadura. Dirigida por Santiago Mitre, le valió a Argentina una nominación al Oscar como mejor largometraje internacional.Darín parece ser el amuleto de la suerte de su país cuando se trata de los premios de la Academia. Ha protagonizado las cuatro películas por las que Argentina ha sido nominada este siglo: El hijo de la novia, Relatos salvajes y El secreto de sus ojos, que se llevó la estatuilla en 2010. A lo largo de los años, Argentina ha postulado a la Academia otras producciones estelarizadas por Darín, lo que significa que, aunque no todas fueron nominadas, las películas en las que aparece son casi sinónimo de lo mejor del cine argentino.Desde el primer apretón de manos, Darín, de 66 años, irradia un aura acogedora. Vestido de manera informal con jeans y una camiseta color azul marino, habla con una calidez y franqueza que la mayoría de la gente reserva para sus amigos más íntimos. Ese temperamento se traduce en la pantalla.“Ricardo tiene un inmenso poder de empatía con la audiencia, y eso es raro”, afirmó el director Juan José Campanella, colaborador de Darín en cuatro largometrajes.“Ricardo tiene un inmenso poder de empatía con la audiencia, y eso es raro”, dijo el director Juan José Campanella.David Billet para The New York TimesAunque la pasión por la interpretación la heredó de sus padres, que trabajaban como actores en Buenos Aires, ninguno de los dos estaba entusiasmado con que continuara el oficio familiar. “No me pelearon, pero tampoco me ponían fichas para que lo hiciera”, recordó.Darín considera que su camino está predestinado. Durante su infancia, visitaba con regularidad platós de cine y televisión, y escenarios teatrales, y actuó profesionalmente por primera vez a los 3 años en la serie de 1960 Soledad Monsalvo. A los 10, debutó en el escenario junto a sus padres. A los 14, cuando asistió a su primer taller de teatro, Darín ya se sentía un veterano que había experimentado de primera mano muchas facetas del oficio.Durante un tiempo, en la adolescencia, se planteó ser veterinario, psicólogo o incluso abogado. Pero al final, el mundo con el que siempre había estado familiarizado le convenció para quedarse. Las puertas se le abrían con facilidad, con frecuentes invitaciones a participar en diversos proyectos.Esa confianza de gente notable del sector es lo que él llama fortuna. Darín guarda un entrañable recuerdo de la directora de televisión Diana Álvarez, que se peleó con una cadena en 1982 para que él formara parte del programa Nosotros y los miedos. Ella vio en él un potencial que otros no pudieron.“La suerte en nuestro oficio es muy importante”, dice Darín. “Hay una gran cantidad de gente talentosa allá afuera con mucho que contar que no encuentran oportunidades”.En la década de 1990, Darín tuvo un gran éxito en la comedia televisiva Mi cuñado, en la que interpretaba a un torpe impertinente pero encantador. Su contrato le impedía participar en otros proyectos televisivos, pero le permitió dedicarse al cine. Entre sus papeles filmográficos está su primera película con Campanella, El mismo amor, la misma lluvia (1999), que ayudó a otros directores a ver más allá de su personaje en la televisión.Las películas de Darín nominadas por la Academia, en el sentido de las agujas del reloj desde arriba a la izquierda: Argentina, 1985, El hijo de la novia, El secreto de sus ojos y Relatos salvajes.Amazon Prime; Sony Pictures Classics; Sony Pictures Classics; María Antolini/Sony Pictures Classics.Uno de ellos, Fabián Bielinsky, le dio el papel de estafador ruin en el filme de suspenso Nueve reinas, estrenado en Argentina en 2000.“Me dijo, ‘Yo no había pensado en vos para este personaje. Porque vos sos demasiado simpático. Y yo no quiero que la audiencia tenga ningún tipo de empatía con él’”, relató Darín.En opinión de Campanella, “hay una sola cosa que Ricardo no puede ser, y eso es antipático. El testimonio más claro de esto es Nueve reinas, donde él hace de un estafador amoral, y aun así estamos de su lado”.Al año siguiente, llegó la conmovedora El hijo de la novia, de Campanella, que aprovechó la sensibilidad cómica de Darín para darle la vida al papel del dueño de un restaurante que se ocupa de sus padres ancianos.“Una vez un crítico lo llamó ‘nuestro Henry Fonda’ porque proyecta entereza”, señaló Campanella. “Pero tiene una cosa que Fonda no tenía, lo cual es un gran sentido del humor”.Darín sostiene que fue el estreno consecutivo de Nueve reinas y El hijo de la novia lo que cimentó su carrera cinematográfica.“Fue como una muy buena carta de presentación para un actor tener la posibilidad de mostrar dos facetas absolutamente opuestas casi al mismo tiempo”, asegura Darín. “A pesar de que yo ya era muy conocido por cuestiones televisivas y en teatro, ahí yo empecé a sentir que mis colegas me empezaron a considerar un poco mejor”.Desde entonces, el actor ha disfrutado con los papeles que eligió, incluida la aclamada El secreto de sus ojos, de Campanella, en la que interpretó a un investigador atormentado por un espantoso caso sin resolver.Otro de los papeles favoritos de Darín es la comedia dramática Truman (2017), centrada en un enfermo terminal que pasa sus últimos días junto a sus mejores amigos, uno humano y otro canino. Su personaje sarcástico le recordó a Darín a su difunto padre, también llamado Ricardo Darín, a quien describió como un peculiar hombre del Renacimiento con un sentido del humor mordaz e ideas descabelladas que a otros les resultaban difíciles de digerir.Hollywood le ha tendido la mano un puñado de veces, pero él la ha rechazado, sobre todo porque lo más difícil para un actor es pensar en otro idioma, afirmó, y añadió que los primeros planos revelan cuando alguien está recitando de memoria en lugar de habitar una emoción.“Siempre he confiado mucho en mi estómago, más que en mi corazón o mi cabeza”, explicó Darín, y luego añadió, señalando su vientre: “Confío en cómo el material me pega aquí”.Hollywood lo ha buscado, pero Darín no está muy interesado porque, según dice, pensar en otro idioma es lo más difícil para un actor.David Billet para The New York TimesEn Argentina, su papel en Relatos salvajes (estrenada en Estados Unidos en 2015), de Damián Szifron, como un ciudadano frustrado que lucha contra la opresiva burocracia, fue muy bien acogido por el público. “Ricardo tiene una mirada lúcida sobre las realidades que afectan a su país”, aseguró Szifron. “Es una figura popular y, al mismo tiempo, un actor sofisticado”.Para Argentina, 1985, Mitre y Darín acordaron no imitar la voz ni los gestos exactos del Strassera real, sino que se tomaron cierta libertad artística en su recreación.Mitre, que había dirigido a Darín como un presidente argentino ficticio en la saga política de 2017 La cordillera, dijo que admiraba cómo el actor produce una interpretación veraz a través de una síntesis de sus propias sensibilidades y las del personaje.“Es como si la cámara lo pudiera mostrar por completo, mostrarlo en toda su complejidad”, comentó Mitre. “Siempre que ves a Ricardo actuar, sabés que va a haber gran honestidad en la pantalla”.Más allá de la positiva recepción crítica de Argentina, 1985” —y de su triunfo en los Globos de Oro—, Darín dijo que el efecto más significativo de la película fue concienciar a una generación más joven sobre un capítulo doloroso de la historia del país.“No podemos olvidar que detrás de esta recuperación del evento histórico que nos ha traído tantos elogios y felicidad, hay una historia de mucho dolor, de esa clase de dolor que no tiene bálsamo”, señaló Darín con expresión solemne.Su hijo Chino Darín, con el que ha creado una productora, continúa la tradición interpretativa de su familia. Ambos protagonizan y producen la comedia de 2019 La odisea de los giles. Darín nunca se opuso a que su hijo se interesara por el oficio, solo le aconsejaba que siguiera el camino que le diera más satisfacciones.“Soy de los que creen que lo más importante en la vida es tratar de ser feliz”, dijo Darín. “Entre más cerca está uno de su vocación, tiene más chance de ser feliz”. More

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      Movie Tickets Veer Away From One-Price-Fits-All

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      Anyone buying a ticket for a concert, baseball game, Broadway play or flight has experienced it: Seats are now priced with dizzying complexity, with costs in some instances changing minute by minute, based on demand.But movie theaters? In many ways, they have been trapped in pricing amber. A seat has cost the same no matter where it is or when it is bought.No more.As they struggle in a fast-changing business, multiplex operators — some carrying astounding debt because of pandemic shutdowns — have started to experiment with pricing in ways that have startled moviegoers. AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest cinema chain, is testing “sightline” pricing, giving seats at evening screenings different costs depending on their location. (Discounts of $1 to $2 for the neck-craning front row, increases of $1 to $2 for the center middle, status quo for the rest.) Chains have also started to charge more on opening weekends for expected blockbusters like “The Batman” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” with plans to ramp up the practice.“It’s a taste of what’s coming,” said Stacy Spikes, who co-founded the subscription ticketing service MoviePass, which he plans to reintroduce nationwide this summer. “The big theater chains are gaining the technology to implement variable pricing on a wide scale. This may have near-term financial benefits, but it may also reduce attendance of younger customers who are more price sensitive and key to future growth.”Increasingly, theaters have been pushing customers toward premium-priced specialty tickets. On Saturday evening at AMC Lincoln Square in New York, for instance, patrons interested in the boxing drama “Creed III” could choose from three IMAX screenings (a $7 to $11 surcharge, depending on seat location), three screenings with Dolby audio and visual technology and reclining chairs ($8 to $12 more), and two standard screenings ($18 for a regular adult ticket).“I’m going to go, no matter what, because I love it, but sorting through all the options is starting to feel like a nuisance,” said Chris Ordal, a tech executive in Los Angeles. “I understand why chains are doing this, but they’re not doing a good job of communicating how it helps the consumer.”Theaters have increasingly been pushing premium-priced specialty tickets for movies like “Creed III.”Eli Ade/MGM, via Associated PressThe move toward pricing complexity adds risk as theater owners look for ways to get people back into the ticket-buying habit after three pandemic-battered years. IMAX has been experimenting with live events, including concert simulcasts. Fathom Events has premiered episodes of a religious TV show, “The Chosen,” in theaters; episodes have generated $20 million at the box office since November, despite being available free online.Prices may actually be going down for certain types of movies — ones that have struggled to attract ticket buyers in the streaming age, including comedies, conventional dramas and art films. Last month, theaters lowered opening-weekend prices for the octogenarian comedy “80 for Brady” to attract value-sensitive older customers. Tickets for evening screenings cost the same as a matinee, a discount of up to 30 percent, depending on the location. Some theaters offered the same deal for “A Man Called Otto,” starring Tom Hanks.“In a business where the only innovation in pricing has been to go up, this is a good first step,” said Chris Aronson, the president of domestic distribution at Paramount Pictures, which released “80 for Brady” and urged theaters to lower prices.Inside the Media IndustryRupert Murdoch: The conservative media mogul acknowledged in a deposition in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit that several Fox News hosts promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen.Dropping ‘Dilbert’: Hundreds of newspapers across the country will stop running the comic strip after its creator, Scott Adams, said that Black people were “a hate group.”Carlos Watson: The founder of the troubled digital start-up Ozy Media was arrested on fraud charges, punctuating one of the more precipitous falls in the annals of online journalism.Vice Media: The departure of Nancy Dubuc, the chief executive of Vice, highlights the fallen fortunes of a group of digital media companies that not long ago was talked about as the future of the industry.“We’re hopeful that others will follow,” Mr. Aronson added, “and that this is hopefully the beginning of alternative ways of looking at pricing.” (Antitrust rules prevent studios from setting ticket prices themselves.)Theaters offered lower ticket prices for “80 for Brady,” hoping to attract value-conscious older customers.Scott Garfield/Paramount PicturesParamount spent about $28 million to make “80 for Brady,” which has so far collected about $40 million. Roughly 15 percent of the film’s target audience, women over 50, had not been to a theater in more than a year, according to exit surveys.Charging less for certain kinds of movies and more for others has long been a Hollywood third rail, with filmmakers panicking that it will send a message about quality. Just try telling Martin Scorsese that tickets for his next prestige drama will cost less than ones for “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”The difference now is that the theatrical marketplace has become so difficult for certain genres that many filmmakers may have no choice. Do you want your film to be seen in theaters? Or are you fine with it going straight to streaming, where it could get lost in the digital maw? If the answer is theaters, you may have to accept a discounted price.The average movie ticket cost $11.75 in 2022, according to EntTelligence, a research firm. In New York, prices reach $28, depending on the format. A small popcorn at AMC Lincoln Square costs $10 with tax. (Fun fact: The average movie ticket price in 1969 was $1.42, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. Adjusted for inflation, that ticket would cost $11.93 today.)Because multiplex chains make most of their money from popcorn and soda, it is in their economic interest to keep ticket prices low; concession counters rely on foot traffic. But there isn’t much room to raise the price of popcorn anymore, prompting some operators to look at “creative” ticket pricing for growth.It has been a tough stretch for theaters. More than 500 movie screens have closed since the start of the pandemic.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesCinema attendance had been declining for decades, with people citing a variety of reasons for going less often: 50-inch TVs at home, streaming services, rude patrons who text on their phones when the lights go down. But the pandemic caused ticket sales to collapse in 2020 and 2021. More than 500 movie screens have closed since the start of the pandemic. Cineworld, the world’s No. 2 chain, filed for bankruptcy in September, and dozens of its Regal multiplexes in the United States have closed.A recovery has been slower than expected. Cinemas in North America sold $7.5 billion in tickets in 2022, a 34 percent decrease from 2019, according to EntTelligence. This year, domestic ticket sales are running 24 percent behind the same period in 2019, according to Comscore.The gap is expected to narrow this summer, largely because the flow of new movies is normalizing. Movies delayed by pandemic bottlenecks are finally ready. Studios are also rerouting fewer movies to streaming services. Twelve movies costing at least $100 million to make will arrive in theaters from May to July, up from six during that period last year.“If you squint hard enough, it is possible now to see a return to the better days,” Robert Fishman, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson who follows the Cinemark multiplex chain.Cinemark has comparatively little debt, but the hole for other theater companies is deep. AMC, which according to security filings has more than $5 billion in debt, said last week that it generated $990 million in the fourth quarter of last year, a 15 percent decline from 2021, and lost about $288 million.To shore itself up, AMC has offered $5 movie tickets on Tuesdays, introduced home popcorn products in partnership with Walmart, enhanced its Stubs loyalty program, announced plans to turn some theaters into Zoom conference rooms for corporate events and invested in a struggling Nevada gold mine. (Yes, really.) Last month, AMC announced its pricing experiment with seat location, which it calls Sightline.Adam Aron, AMC’s chief executive, characterized that move — charging a bit more for the best seats — as less a moneymaking gambit than a way to avoid broader price increases.“In these inflationary times, we are coming under pressure to raise prices,” Mr. Aron said in an interview. “We could have raised prices on every seat in the house. Instead, we are holding the line on 75 percent of the seats in the house.” (Also, subscribers to AMC’s premium loyalty program, Stubs A-List, can book a “preferred” seat at no extra charge.)Wall Street responded favorably. But cinephiles had a conniption. In a column, The Chicago Tribune’s film critic, Michael Phillips, called Sightline “a bush-league pickpocket move” and “the latest tiny nail getting tap-tap-tapped into the coffin currently under construction for an entire era of filmgoing.”AMC has pushed back, noting that some European cinemas have charged a premium for prime seats for years. Yes, prices are high in New York and Los Angeles, Mr. Aron acknowledged. But he said 30 percent of AMC customers paid less than $8 a ticket.“When you change the way an industry has priced itself for 100 years, it is not surprising that there is going to be lots of reaction,” Mr. Aron said. “It is our expectation that consumers will adjust to this very quickly.” More