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      Richard Anobile, Chronicler of the Marx Brothers, Dies at 76

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      He produced many books about film. But Groucho Marx tried to stop distribution of one collaborative effort because he didn’t like seeing his salty and insulting remarks in print.Richard Anobile, a prolific creator of film books whose friendly collaboration with the anarchic comedian Groucho Marx on a project called “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook” turned sour when Mr. Marx sued to stop its distribution after reading his unedited quoted remarks in print, died on Feb. 10 in Toronto. He was 76.His wife, Elizabeth (Golfman) Anobile, said the cause was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.Mr. Anobile (pronounced a-NO-buh-lay) first entered the world of Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo Marx with the publication in 1971 of “Why a Duck?” (the title is based on wordplay between Groucho and Chico over the word “viaduct” in the 1929 movie “The Cocoanuts”). The book combined blowups of frames from scenes in eight of the comedy team’s films with the dialogue that accompanied them. Groucho Marx wrote the introduction.“The Marx Bros. Scrapbook,” published two years later, was a more ambitious project, and it brought Mr. Anobile into closer contact with Groucho, then in his 80s, through an introduction by his agent.In addition to excerpts from his many hours of interviews with Mr. Marx, the book included photographs and illustrations, as well as playbills, reviews, advertisements, family scrapbook entries and pages from film scripts. Mr. Anobile also interviewed the other two surviving Marx brothers, Gummo (who left the group long before they started making movies) and Zeppo, as well as friends like the comedian Jack Benny.The film critic Roger Ebert called “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook” “the all-time definitive work on the subject.”Writing in The Chicago Sun-Times, the film critic Roger Ebert called the book “the all-time definitive work on the subject.”But Mr. Marx regretted the publication of his raw opinions of people like his brother Chico (“All he could do was shoot the piano keys”); Noël Coward and Truman Capote (whom he tarred with gay slurs); George M. Cohan (“a no-good Irish son of a bitch”); S.J. Perelman, who contributed to the scripts of two Marx Brothers films (“I hated the son of a bitch and he had a head as big as my desk”); and Marilyn Monroe, who had a small role in “Love Happy” (1949), the brothers’ last film.In late 1973, Mr. Marx sought an injunction in New York State Supreme Court to stop the distribution of the book, although it had already been delivered to bookstores nationwide. He argued that it contained “defamatory, scandalous, obscene and inflammatory matter” and that Mr. Anobile had assured him that he was going to turn his raw language into respectable prose.Whatever it was he had said — to paraphrase a song he had sung in “Horse Feathers” (1932) — he was against it.To prove that Mr. Marx said what he had said, Mr. Anobile brought the tapes of their interviews into court. In a letter to the editor of The New York Times in 1974, he recalled cautioning Mr. Marx not to say anything during the interviews that he did not want to see published.He added, “He signed a jacket of the book, ‘This is a wonderful book, Richard, thanks to you.’”Mr. Marx — who staged one of his depositions in a Manhattan hotel suite wearing a shirt patterned with the titles of Marx Brothers films and bearing the slogan “Money talks” — never got the injunction or the $15 million in damages that he had demanded.Mr. Anobile told the blog Brain Dead and Loving It in 2018 that the case was settled after Mr. Marx’s death in 1977.Groucho Marx in 1964. He sought an injunction in 1973 to stop the distribution of “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook,” although it had already been delivered to bookstores nationwide. He argued that it contained “defamatory, scandalous, obscene and inflammatory matter.”W. Breeze/Evening Standard, via Getty ImagesRichard Joseph Anobile was born on Feb. 6, 1947, in the Bronx. His father, Joseph, was a government worker; his mother, Isabella (Lanzella) Anobile, was a homemaker who sometimes worked in a bakery. He grew up watching old comedies on television and studied film at the City College of New York; he said he directed one film there but grew disenchanted with the courses and got a job in the paid obituaries department of a newspaper.Another job, with the film collector Raymond Rohauer, led him to work on retrospectives of the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy at the supermarket heir Huntington Hartford’s Gallery of Modern Art in Manhattan. In 1969, he published his first book — “Drat: Being the Encapsulated View of Life by W.C. Fields in His Own Words” — about the comedian with the bulbous nose and misanthropic screen persona who starred in films like “It’s a Gift” (1934) and “The Bank Dick” (1940).It was the start of an unusual publishing career. Mr. Anobile went on to combine movie frames and dialogue in books that ambitiously reconstructed complete films, including “Casablanca,” “Psycho,” Stagecoach,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “Frankenstein” and “Play It Again, Sam.” He used the same formula to describe “verbal and visual gems” in the films of W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers.He continued to publish into the 1980s, when he realized that people were more likely to watch a film on videocassette than experience it through a book-length, frame-by-frame reconstruction.He soon moved into television production — where he had wanted to be since he was in college — and worked largely as a postproduction supervisor on movies like “Liberace: Behind the Music” (1988) and “Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story” (2004), and series including “Murdoch Mysteries.” He was also the associate producer of some TV projects and, last year, a producer of episodes of “The Kings of Napa,” a series about the wine business on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN channel.In addition to his wife, Mr. Anobile is survived by his stepdaughter, Tamara Kruger. His two previous marriages ended in divorce.When Mr. Anobile began work on “Why a Duck?,” he recalled, he envisioned creating a short, simple book, like “Drat,” filled with quotations and stills from Marx Brothers films. Instead, it became a detailed 288-page book, with scenes matched to their dialogue.“I became so involved with their comedy that I began having guilt feelings about hatcheting my way through their films, plucking one line here and one line there and pawning it off as representative of their humor,” he wrote in “Why a Duck?” “So, faced by the bulk of what I had already accumulated, I decided to do what no one had tried — compile as complete a volume as possible by attempting a literal translation from celluloid to paper.” More

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      Stream These 5 TV Shows and Movies Before They Leave Netflix in March

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      Cult-favorite TV shows and some movies that should have gotten more Oscar love than they did: Catch these titles before they’re gone for U.S. subscribers.This month’s departing titles on Netflix in the United States include two cult-favorite television shows worth your attention, a slapstick comedy with a peculiar origin story and two dramas that should have won more Oscars than they did. Stream them while you can. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Hap and Leonard’ Seasons 1-3 (March 5)“The Wire” wasn’t the only top-notch television showcase for the dearly departed Michael K. Williams; eight years after that show’s finale, he took a leading role in this excellent adaptation of the crime novels by Joe R. Lansdale. (The series was developed by Nick Damici and Jim Mickle, whose screen adaptation of Lansdale’s “Cold in July” is one of the hidden gems of 2010s genre cinema.) Williams plays Leonard Pine, a gay Vietnam veteran, and James Purefoy plays Hap Collins, an ex-cop who is Leonard’s best friend. Their adventures in East Texas in the late 1980s have a lowdown, chewy snap that recalls Elmore Leonard, and the show’s supporting cast (including Andrew Dice Clay, Brian Dennehy, Irma P. Hall, Christina Hendricks and Jimmi Simpson) is delightfully eclectic.Stream it here.‘The Butler’ (March 16)The director Lee Daniels followed up the triumph of “Precious” (and the somewhat less enthusiastically received “The Paperboy”) with something utterly unexpected: a historical drama. He tells the story of Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), a character based on the true figure Eugene Allen, who served as the White House butler from the Eisenhower through Reagan administrations. But this is no staid biopic; Daniels uses his signature wild humor, unpredictable tempo and gonzo casting choices (Robin Williams as Ike Eisenhower! John Cusack as Richard Nixon! Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan!) to create a one-of-a-kind take on an overdone genre.Stream it here.‘Shtisel’ Seasons 1-3 (March 24)This Israeli drama began airing in 2013, years before it could benefit from being labeled an ultra-Orthodox “Succession.” But when it began streaming on Netflix in late 2018, that simple and apt comparison turned it into a word-of-mouth hit, prompting a third season five years after the Season 2 finale. It’s not hard to figure out why; the series is filled with the kind of familial betrayal, stifled sexuality and sibling rivalries typical of prestige TV mainstays like “Succession,” “The Sopranos” and “Mad Men” but with an added layer provided by its setting in an insular community. In other words, it is highly bingeable, so get on it.Stream it here.‘30 Minutes or Less’ (March 31)The director Ruben Fleischer and his “Zombieland” (2009) star Jesse Eisenberg re-teamed in the wake of that hit for this slapstick action-comedy. Eisenberg stars as Nick, a pizza delivery guy who is merely doing his job when he is kidnapped by bumbling criminals, who strap a bomb to his chest and threaten to detonate it unless he robs a bank for them. If the plot sounds familiar, it should: The script is based loosely on a true story, which inspired the Netflix true crime docu-series “Evil Genius.” And while turning a real (and tragic) crime into a wacky comedy is perhaps questionable, Fleischer orchestrates the manic proceedings with style, and the supporting cast of comic M.V.P.s (including Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, Michael Peña and Nick Swardson) land plenty of laughs.Stream it here.‘Brokeback Mountain’ (March 31)This 2005 drama from Ang Lee has become so synonymous with Oscar injustice — although Lee won best director, the best picture prize went to the comparatively didactic and graceless “Crash” — that it is easy to focus on that loud aftermath rather than the film. And that’s unfortunate for such a modest picture, such a firm but quiet whisper of need and desire. “Brokeback” is based on a short story by Annie Proulx and has a commensurate narrative and emotional focus, telling the story of two cowboys (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) in Wyoming, circa 1963, whose drunken sexual encounter turns into a decades-long secret relationship. This is one of Ledger’s most wrenching performances; Gyllenhaal provides potent contrast as the more expressive and emotional of the two, while Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway are heartbreaking as the spouses who don’t know, but do.Stream it here. More

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      Acting Awards Without Gender Categories? Here’s Where Celebrities Stand

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      Nominees at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday were split on combining award show categories for best actor and best actress.LOS ANGELES — On the red carpet before the Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles on Sunday, stars answered the usual questions. Were they excited to be here? Yes. How did it feel to be recognized? Amazing. What TV show would they want to guest star in? “The White Lotus.”But one question we posed made nearly every person stop, ponder for several seconds and then deliver a thinking-aloud answer, often with a caveat or a pivot in the middle:“Should major award shows eliminate separate acting categories for men and women?” we asked.The ongoing debate over gender-neutral acting prizes, which could also mean fewer nominations for everyone, is part of the conversation again this awards season. In 2021, the Gotham Awards, which honor independent films, nixed separate acting categories for men and women. Last year, the Brit Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Grammys, merged its categories for best male and best female artist of the year into one gender-neutral top prize. And this year, the event faced backlash for not nominating any women for the award. The Grammy Awards eliminated many gendered categories beginning with the 2012 ceremony.Nonbinary actors such as Emma Corrin, who are often forced to choose a category in which to be considered, have called for gender-neutral award categories. The trans nonbinary performer Justin David Sullivan from the Broadway musical “& Juliet” withdrew their name from consideration when the Tony Awards eligibility rulings were announced earlier this month, putting public pressure on the awards. (Both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out Oscars, and the Television Academy, which handles the Emmy Awards, are looking into nongendered categories, according to The Los Angeles Times. Nominees are already able to request gender-neutral wording on their awards at both events.)The immediate response of many attendees at the SAG Awards was a desire for awards to be more inclusive.“I think it’s a positive thing,” said Will Sharpe, who plays Ethan Spiller, the workaholic tech nerd married to Harper on Season 2 of “The White Lotus,” which won the top TV award for a drama series on Sunday night, noting he believed it would “level out the playing field.”Will Sharpe from Season 2 of “The White Lotus” at the SAG Awards. Aude Guerrucci/Reuters“Why not?” said Michael Imperioli, who plays the womanizing Hollywood producer Dominic Di Grasso on “The White Lotus,” on combining the acting categories. “It’s all one big acting soup.”Other nominees addressed the potential benefit for nonbinary actors.“There are people who don’t want to be defined by gender, and I want to help make awards more inclusive for them,” said Rhea Seehorn, who plays the lawyer Kim Wexler in “Better Call Saul,” which was nominated for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series for its final season.But then she paused.“At the same time,” she added, until women and nonbinary performers are afforded “as much screen time as the men, it’s not very fair to compare the performances.”Top awards often go to the actors who spend the most time onscreen, and a recent study found that, in 2021, in the top 100 grossing films, male characters outnumbered female ones by almost two to one.Jamie Lee Curtis, who won the supporting-actress statuette for her role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” over the Golden Globe winner Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) and the BAFTA winner Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), echoed Ms. Seehorn’s indecision.Jamie Lee Curtis won a SAG Award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role for her part in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”Frazer Harrison/Getty Images“I’m all for inclusion, which is the most important thing,” she said, “but, at the same time, I want to make sure that the most opportunities are available to people. I know a lot of people believe in same-sex education. There are a lot of young women who get very quiet when the boys get really loud.”Female nominees in particular expressed concern that the idea of a single prize would put men at a distinct advantage because of the richer and more numerous roles available to them.“There’s still a lot of male parts,” said Patricia Arquette, who plays Harmony Cobel, Mark’s domineering boss, in “Severance,” which was nominated for outstanding ensemble performance in a drama series. “I don’t know if that would be fair.”Patricia Arquette plays Harmony Cobel in “Severance,” which was nominated for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated Press“Until there’s a 50-50 opportunity, then we still need to have our own categories,” said Olivia Williams, who plays Camilla Parker Bowles in Season 5 of “The Crown,” which was also nominated for best ensemble performance in a drama series.Sarah Polley, the writer and director of the female-focused film “Women Talking,” which examines sexual assault in a religious community, said the potential for parity in consideration had to be weighed against the realities of the film and television industries.“What none of us want to see is a general acting category where it ends up being all-male nominees,” she said, “Which I think is the fear — and that’s a genuine fear.”But, she added, there were also important considerations to weigh that extend beyond fairness to the issue of fundamental identity.“We have a nonbinary actor in our cast,” she said, referring to August Winter, who plays Melvin, a character who lives as an openly trans man in a patriarchal society. “And there would have had to be a choice made between male and female, neither of which was accurate.”Members of the cast of “Women Talking” from left, Liv McNeil, August Winter, Kate Hallett, Michelle McLeod, Sheila McCarthy, Sarah Polley, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated Press“I’m not sure what the solution is,” she added, “but it certainly can’t stay the way it is, because it is excluding people from being recognized.”Mx. Winter, who uses the pronouns they and them, said they supported gender-neutral categories because they “honor the person who is making the art.”“Right now, you need to choose,” they said, referring to awards that separate categories for men and women. “And I don’t think people should be put in that position.”Other nominees noted, however, that they were concerned that combined categories would lead to fewer performances being recognized.Ms. Bassett said that collapsing the categories could lead to fewer chances for recognition. “I don’t like it,” she said. “Not enough opportunity.”Angela Bassett was nominated for a SAG award for outstanding performance by an actress in a supporting role for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressJon Gries, who plays Greg Hunt, the scheming husband of Jennifer Coolidge’s character, Tanya, in “The White Lotus,” echoed that concern. “When you have best actor, best actress, you have more awards,” he said. (“We like more awards,” said Sabrina Impacciatore, who plays the series’s uptight hotel manager, as she strolled up and put a hand on his shoulder.)Sally Field, who received a lifetime achievement award for her nearly six-decade TV and film career on Sunday night, expressed a general frustration with the competitive nature of awards. “It’s hard to compare actors, whether they be male or female, because the roles are so different,” she said. So the idea of a rule change that would recognize even fewer performances was befuddling to her.“Why would you do that?” she said, looking as though someone had just suggested she go roll through the mud in her ball gown. “I mean, you already can’t even compare Cate Blanchett and Viola Davis. They’re both beyond belief.”Quick Question is a collection of dispatches from red carpets, gala dinners and other events that coax celebrities out of hiding. More

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      ‘Film, the Living Record of Our Memory’ Review: How to Save the Movies

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      This documentary walks through the delicate task of saving the history of movies with the help of enchanting clips and eagle-eyed preservationistsA canard of the internet age is that more movies are accessible than ever, but “Film, the Living Record of Our Memory” reminds us that our cultural heritage is ever-vanishing and requires constant care just to survive. In this multifarious introduction to motion picture preservation, a crowd of devoted professionals in the field hold up film as not just a vital art form but an essential record of humanity.Film history is scarred with moments when nobody was minding the store, and when many in the industry were actively burning the store down. Preservationists from across the globe — including rarely represented African, Asian and Latin American archives — here walk through the delicate process of preservation. Obstacles range from epochal shifts (the dumping of silents, the worship of digital), hostile governments (the neglect of Cinemateca Brasileira that led to a fire), and the weather (humidity kills!). Images of rotting reels keep recurring in the film, like a haunting vision.The film’s director, Inés Toharia, illustrates feats of preservation with lovely clips from obscurities and classics (like “Lawrence of Arabia,” whose sprawling prints were divvied into quarters for restoration by different work groups). Ken Loach, Wim Wenders, Jonas Mekas and Ridley Scott testify, and Martin Scorsese, mastermind of the Film Foundation, is confirmed to be a prince.Even if you know the basics, you’ll pick something up (like Detroit’s massive industrial film output, or how Satyajit Ray’s work was restored with burned reels). For a documentary largely about archives, it should be better organized, but its breathless profusion of information underscores the scale of the task at hand.Film, the Living Record of Our MemoryNot rated. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      Andie MacDowell Is Still Scaling New Heights

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      The star of the movie “My Happy Ending” gets a boost from Sam Harris and bell hooks audiobooks, the music of the 1970s and the quiet intelligence of “EO.”There isn’t a mountain that Andie MacDowell can’t climb, or at least won’t try to.Take her new film, “My Happy Ending,” which was shot on a shoestring budget and a whirlwind schedule in Wales, leaving MacDowell wishing for an extra week for longer prep, different angles, more takes.Yet she eked out the time to summit Snowdon — because, well, it was there and that’s what she does — all while living with the cast and crew in campers’ housing. In the movie, MacDowell, 64, plays Julia Roth, a Hollywood star whose planned comeback on London’s West End has been canceled the same day she learns she has Stage 4 colon cancer. Denied a private room, she receives chemotherapy treatments in public at a British hospital.She finds the character relatable. “It’s hard, but that’s like it is for an older woman,” she said in a video call from Los Angeles.Despite the drama enveloping Julia, MacDowell didn’t want to play her as a diva. “It’s more complex, and I wanted to make her real: someone who’s struggling with her career but also has a sense of humor about it,” she said.MacDowell — who can also be seen in “The Way Home,” her new time-traveling Hallmark series — held the rescue pup she calls Lazy Daisy for its desire to be carried as she talked about her enduring love for Paris, nightly audiobook listening and why being in nature is her happy place. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.The Tom Cruise Factor: Stars were starstruck when the “Top Gun: Maverick” headliner showed up at the Oscar nominees luncheon.An Andrea Riseborough FAQ: Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why her nod was controversial.Sundance and the Oscars: Which films from the festival could follow “CODA” to the 2024 Academy Awards.A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.1Walking in ParisI moved to Paris when I was 20, and there’s that thing like ownership. It’s a piece of me. And I love it because I know how to walk there. Don’t ever go to Paris with someone who doesn’t want to walk. I always go to the Tuileries and everything around it — the Orsay, the Orangerie, the Jeu de Paume and the Louvre. And Rodin’s Garden, just so gorgeous and beautiful and romantic.2Hiking in the SmokiesMy sister Beverly was a teacher, and when she retired at 65, she started leading backpacking trips. I have backpacked with her. We did Mount LeConte, the third tallest mountain in the Smokies. It has an old historic lodge and cabins from the 1930s, no roads there. You hike in, no electricity. Weathered old mountains, not new like the Rockies. Beautiful hardwood forest streams. Wildflowers. Views to make you weep along the way.3Climbing StromboliI did a movie with Harvey Keitel called “Ginostra” a long time ago, and we shot it on Panarea. It’s one of the Aeolian islands in Italy, and it looks out on Stromboli. My son Justin and I climbed Stromboli, and that was just magnificent. I mean, it’s a live volcano. You can sit there and watch it erupt, and I think there’s people that camp there. You can dig in the sand, they told me, and bury a chicken and cook your food. And then when you come down the other side, it’s like you’re flying.4’70s MusicI love all ’70s music — Led Zeppelin, the Who, Fleetwood Mac, the Allman Brothers, Carole King and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I was supposed to go see Ringo at the Greek Theater, but I can’t go this time. I’m looking for something like that. I love “Abbey Road,” the Beatles. I used to listen to it under headphones and feel like my heart would just soar.5‘Waking Up’ by Sam HarrisAt night I like to listen to audiobooks to calm me down. I’ve listened to a lot of Jack Kornfield, over and over again. Likewise bell hooks’s “The Will to Change.” And Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” — it’s like neuroscience and reasoning, and he is very spiritual. It’s pretty dense, a lot of information. It doesn’t hurt to listen to it twice.6‘Mad Men’My daughter Rainey got a little part in it toward the end, so I binge-watched the whole thing. The reason I appreciated it was it gave me insight into the struggles that made my mother mentally unstable. There’s so much that happened to women during that time that was treated as normal, but it was definitely toxic and debilitating psychologically. I think a lot of women struggled because they were dehumanized. “Mad Men” did a really good job of portraying that in a way that was easy to digest, but if you sat and thought about it, it was profound.7‘The Florida Project’Maybe because it’s in the South, the immense poverty, the suffering, but I really loved the way Sean Baker shot it. I thought it was like watching a painting. He has a very artistic eye. I watched “Tangerine” and “Red Rocket” as well, and they’re both great. But “The Florida Project” talked to me.8‘EO’“EO” is my favorite this year. I like the quietness of it. It treats you intelligently. It doesn’t tell you everything. You’re telling yourself, and you’re feeling it.9Charleston, S.C.My friend Mary Alice Monroe and I turned one of her books, “The Beach House,” into a movie for Hallmark. She lives in Charleston. I go down there, and you ride your bikes and there’s a certain smell. The trees have all the Spanish moss and the sound that you hear is a different sound. There’s a lot of wildlife, a lot of beautiful birds. You take the kayaks out early in the morning, and you can see dolphins swimming beside you. I’ve checked on the sea turtles and watched the babies going into the ocean. My goal is to do more nature things because it brings me such joy.10SistersI got a house in South Carolina this summer for me and my sisters. I just hope they can all come. Usually I book these fancy houses, but I have the dog so I couldn’t this time. But I love the house I found because it’s a little bit more like a cottage. It looks really beachy. I haven’t taken a trip just with my sisters since we were children — oh my gosh — and I’m going to be 65 in April. More

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      SAG Awards 2023: Complete List of Winners

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      Will “Everything Everywhere All at Once” take the top prize as it did at the Producers Guild Awards the night before?“Everything Everywhere All at Once” won the top prize at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday night. Will it win again at the Screen Actors Guild Awards? And will that movie’s lead, Michelle Yeoh, take the SAG for best actress, or will that honor go to Cate Blanchett for “Tár”?Those are the biggest questions heading into the SAGs tonight. But we’re also keeping an eye on the supporting actress category. Will Angela Bassett, who won the Critics Choice for her turn as Queen Ramonda in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” prevail or will it be the BAFTAs’ choice, Kerry Condon from “The Banshees of Inisherin”? Or could Stephanie Hsu from “Everything Everywhere” sneak in?You can watch the ceremony, being held at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles and airing on Netflix’s YouTube channel starting at 8 p.m. Eastern time, 5 p.m. Pacific, or check back here as we post live updates of the winners’ list. More

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      Tom Luddy, a Behind-the-Scenes Force in Cinema, Dies at 79

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      Known for his association with Francis Ford Coppola, Werner Herzog and many others, he was also a founder of the Telluride Film Festival.Tom Luddy, a quietly influential film archivist and movie producer who was also a founder of the idiosyncratic Telluride Film Festival, died on Feb. 13 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 79.The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, said Julie Huntsinger, executive director of the Telluride festival, a half-century-old gathering of cinephiles held in a tiny former mining town in Colorado.A transplant from the East Coast, Mr. Luddy landed in Berkeley in the 1960s, just in time to join the radical political activity that was afoot there, notably the Free Speech Movement that dominated the University of California campus in 1964. He worked at the Berkeley Cinema Guild, a two-screen art house that had once been managed by the film critic Pauline Kael, after which he ran the Telegraph Repertory Cinema, another art-house theater, and joined the Pacific Film Archive, part of the U.C. Berkeley Art Museum, which he turned into a vital resource for film devotees and scholars.By the early 1970s he was organizing as many as 800 programs there each year, from Preston Sturges retrospectives to programs of Russian silent films, new German cinema and movies from Senegal. He presented the United States premiere of Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” a Conradian tale starring Klaus Kinski as a Spanish conquistador who sets out to find a lost city in Peru, after it had been rejected by the New York Film Festival.As director of special projects for Francis Ford Coppola’s company American Zoetrope, he produced movies like Paul Schrader’s “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), a complicated documentary about Yukio Mishima, the eccentric Japanese author who killed himself publicly in 1970 — a passion project that Mr. Schrader has described as “the definition of an unfinanceable project.” Mr. Luddy was its tireless booster and supporter, funding it early on with his American Express card.In an email, Mr. Schrader described Mr. Luddy as “the big bang of film consciousness.”Mr. Luddy at the Pacific Film Archive in the 1970s. He turned it into a vital resource for film devotees and scholars.UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film ArchiveHe had a capacity for connecting artists to ideas, and to one another, that went beyond mere networking; it was a kind of vocation. The New York Times called him a human switchboard.It was Mr. Luddy who suggested that Agnès Varda, the French New Wave filmmaker who was in Berkeley in the late 1960s, document the Black Panthers’ efforts to free the Panther leader Huey P. Newton from prison in 1968; her sobering portrait of the activists and their mission captured in two half-hour films is an urgent record of those fractious times. When Laurie Anderson set out to make “Heart of a Dog,” her 2015 meditation on love and loss, and wanted to learn how to make an essayistic film, Mr. Luddy asked her to phone Philip Lopate, the film critic and essayist, for a tutorial.It was a measure of Mr. Luddy’s influence, The Times noted in 1984, that he showed “The Italian,” a 1915 film that is considered a model for the immigrant-gangster epic, to Mr. Coppola before he made “The Godfather,” and “I Vitelloni,” Federico Fellini’s 1953 film about a group of young men on the brink of adulthood drifting about in a small Italian village, to George Lucas before he made “American Graffiti.”And it was Mr. Luddy who introduced Alice Waters, his girlfriend at the time, to the work of Marcel Pagnol, the French filmmaker, in particular “Marius,” “Fanny” and “César,” the trilogy he produced in the 1930s about a group of friends finding their way in Marseille. That inspired the name of Ms. Waters’s restaurant Chez Panisse, the Berkeley institution that ignited the farm-to-table movement.Mr. Luddy with the restaurateur Alice Waters in 2011. He encouraged her to name her restaurant Chez Panisse after a character in a French film trilogy.U.C. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive“We saw the films on three consecutive nights and I cried my eyes out, they were so romantic,” Ms. Waters recalled in a phone interview. “I knew I wanted to name the restaurant after one of the characters. We talked about Marius, Fanny’s lover, and Tom said, ‘Oh no, it has to be after that kindly man who married Fanny, and that was Panisse. And besides, he was the only one who made any money.’”Chez Panisse would go on to global fame, but it remained Mr. Luddy’s dining room, where he could collect like-minded artists and watch the sparks fly. He and the restaurant also figured largely in a footnote to the moviemaking ethos of that decade, or at least of Mr. Luddy’s cohort, captured in an affecting short film by Les Blank called “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.”As the story goes, Mr. Herzog challenged his fellow filmmaker Errol Morris to a bet, which was either a publicity stunt organized by Mr. Luddy or a genuine goad from Mr. Herzog: Mr. Herzog told Mr. Morris that if he succeeded in his seemingly quixotic mission to finish his first film, “Gates of Heaven,” a quirky, Gothic documentary about pet cemeteries, Mr. Herzog would eat his shoe. The movie was completed by 1978, and Mr. Luddy, Ms. Waters and Mr. Herzog set to work to honor the bet.Mr. Luddy was the master of ceremonies in 1979 when Werner Herzog honored his promise to eat his own shoe if his fellow filmmaker Errol Morris completed his documentary “Gates of Heaven.” Telluride Film FestivalMs. Waters decided, she said, that the best way to get the job done was to treat the shoe (a leather desert boot, actually) like a pig’s foot or a duck and braise it for hours in duck fat and herbs, which they did in her kitchen. Later, at a screening of “Gates of Heaven” in 1979, Mr. Luddy played master of ceremonies as Mr. Herzog, with the aid of a pair of cooking shears, tackled his meal, which was laid out on a table on the theater’s stage. He bravely choked down a few bites, as did Mr. Luddy. Mr. Blank’s film is a touching, and very funny, ode to art-making, and also to the skillful machinations of Mr. Luddy.In 1974, Mr. Luddy and a group of friends, Stella and Bill Pence and the film historian James Card, conceived a film festival to be held over three days in September in the picturesque former mining town of Telluride, Colo. (Bill Pence died in December.) There would be no prizes, no angling for distribution, no marketing, no paparazzi and no red carpets — just an almost inconceivable amount of screenings, talks and shenanigans. They would show old films and new, local films and foreign, and art films as well as more popular fare, the offerings curated according to the organizers’ own appetites and interests. There would be guest curators from outside the film word, too, like Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo, Rachel Kushner and Stephen Sondheim.You might find Louis Malle at the bar, Robert Downey Sr. declaiming in the town’s plaza that plots were dead, Mr. Herzog and Barbet Schroeder playing table football. Mr. Lopate recalled that during the festival’s first year he found himself on an elevator with Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi propagandist, and Gloria Swanson. The two women were trading health secrets involving sesame seeds.“It mixes new directors and old ones — the venerable King Vidor is here this year — actors, distributors, scholars and the bristly and ardent society of film buffs,” The Times wrote in 1976. “Everyone is available to everyone else — names and no‐names, young and old — up to the point of exhaustion and past it.”In 2016, A.O. Scott of The Times described the festival, then in its fifth decade, as “a gathering of the faithful, consecrated to the old-time cinephile religion,” adding: “The local school gym and a hockey rink on the edge of town are temporarily converted into what screening M.C.s unironically refer to as cathedrals of cinema. Everyone is a believer.”Mr. Luddy might have been cinema’s most fervent believer, as well as its main officiant. The festival reflected his tastes, which were, as David Thomson, the San Francisco-based British film critic and historian, said, “both catholic and universal.” But, he added, “friendship was Tom’s art, really. He was unlimited in his wish and ability to help people in the broad area of film, and he did it without any ulterior motive, which is not common in the movie world.”Mr. Luddy at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival. The festival became a gathering of devotees to the religion of filmmaking, and Mr. Luddy was its most fervent believer and its main officiant. Pamela Gentile, via Telluride Film FestivalThomas William Luddy was born on June 4, 1943, in New York City, and grew up in White Plains, N.Y., raised by staunch Democrats in what had been a monolithically Republican community. His father, William Luddy, who had worked in newspaper advertising and founded a national merchandise reporting service, was campaign manager for various candidates and, finally, chairman of Westchester County’s Democratic Party. His mother, Virginia (O’Neill) Luddy, was a homemaker and political volunteer.At the University of California, Berkeley, Tom studied physics and then literature, graduating with a B.A. in English. He also ran a film society and played on the varsity golf team.Mr. Luddy is survived by his wife, Monique Montgomery Luddy; his brothers, Brian, James and David; and his sister, Jeanne Van Duzer.Although Mr. Luddy spent most of his time behind the scenes, he did appear in one movie: Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which he played to the creepy hilt one of the first humans to metamorphose into a pod person. “Ah, the ubiquitous Tom Luddy,” The Times quoted a member of a film crew as saying in 1984. “It always seems like there were three or four of him!” More

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      ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Takes Producers Guild Award

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      The prize is a strong indicator of what will win best picture at the Oscars. The film already won the Directors Guild Award.Add another one to the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” trophy shelf (and slap some googly eyes on it, too).The Producers Guild of America handed its best film award on Saturday night to the sci-fi hit about a Chinese American laundromat owner’s unlikely quest to save the multiverse, extending the film’s award-season momentum after a big win at last weekend’s Directors Guild ceremony.The producer Jonathan Wang took the stage flanked by his cast, including Oscar nominees Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis, and the film’s directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Wang spoke movingly about his feeling of never fitting in as a mixed-race child.“When I was with my Chinese family, I never felt really Chinese, and with my while family, I never really felt white,” Wang said. “But in this room with all you other nominees, you shouldn’t have accepted me, you shouldn’t have welcomed me in, but I feel like family in this room with you producers.”There is no stronger best-picture bellwether than the PGA Awards, which are voted on by a guild that shares significant member overlap with the academy. Since 2009, when both groups adopted a preferential ballot and expanded the number of best film nominees from five, the PGA winner has repeated at the Oscars all but three times. Last year, when the Producers Guild opted for “CODA” over the Directors Guild winner “The Power of the Dog,” it offered the strongest evidence that the family dramedy was on a path to Oscar’s top prize. And of the last 15 films to win both the PGA and DGA prizes, 11 went on to win the best picture Oscar.Inside the World of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’In this mind-expanding, idiosyncratic take on the superhero film, a laundromat owner is the focus of a grand, multiversal showdown.Review: Our film critic called “Everything Everywhere All at Once” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy.The Protagonist: Over the years, Michelle Yeoh has built her image as a combat expert. For this movie, she drew on her emotional reserves.A Lovelorn Romantic: An ‘80s child star, Ke Huy Quan returns to acting as the husband of Yeoh’s character, a role blending action and drama.A Side Dish of Nothing: Two of the most talked-about movies of 2022, “Everything Everywhere” and “Glass Onion,” delve into nihilism through conceptual foodstuffs. What they do next is surprising.With two significant guild prizes in its pocket, “Everything Everywhere” is heavily favored to triumph at both the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night and the Writers Guild Awards next weekend. That would be an auspicious clean sweep: In the last 28 years, no film has won the best picture Oscar without first taking a top prize from at least one of Hollywood’s four major guilds.Is the final race decided, then? Well, it’s worth noting that “Everything Everywhere” got a cold shoulder last weekend at the BAFTAs, prizes that are handed out by the British academy, which also shares members with the American academy: Despite 10 BAFTA nominations, “Everything” won only an editing prize, and even season-long sweeper Ke Huy Quan lost the supporting-actor trophy to “The Banshees of Inisherin” star Barry Keoghan. BAFTA gave its best film award to Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” though it will be difficult for that war movie to build dark-horse momentum over the coming weeks, as it was not nominated for the SAG, WGA, or Independent Spirit Awards.Elsewhere at the PGA Awards, the documentary film prize went to “Navalny,” while “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” was named the best animated film. The top TV awards went to “The White Lotus” (best episodic drama), “The Bear” (best episodic comedy) and “The Dropout” (best limited series).Here’s the complete list of winners:FilmBest Film: “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Animated Feature: “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”Documentary: “Navalny”David O. Selznick Award: Tom CruiseStanley Kramer Award: “Till”Milestone Award: Michael De Luca and Pamela AbdyTelevisionEpisodic Drama: “The White Lotus”Episodic Comedy: “The Bear”Limited Anthology Series: “The Dropout”Television Movie: “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”Nonfiction Television: “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy”Live, Variety, Sketch, Standup and Talk Show: “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver”Game and Competition Television: “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls”Sports Program: “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Come Off”Children’s Program: “Sesame Street”Short-Form Program: “Only Murders in the Building: One Killer Question”PGA Innovation Award: “Stay Alive, My Son”Norman Lear Achievement Award: Mindy Kaling More