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      Michelle Materre, Champion of Black Independent Film, Dies at 67

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      Through her distribution company and an educational series, Ms. Materre was for decades a tireless advocate for underrepresented filmmakers.Michelle Materre, a distributor and educator who promoted Black women’s voices in film and released influential independent movies by Black creators, died on March 11 in White Plains, N.Y. She was 67.A friend, Kathryn Bowser, said the cause was oral cancer.Ms. Materre was an early proponent of independently released works by Black female directors, beginning at a time when diversity in independent film was far from the forefront of the cultural conversation.Her company, KJM3 Entertainment Group, worked on distribution for major films; one of its first projects was the marketing of Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust.” Widely viewed as a masterpiece of Black independent cinema and said to have been the first feature film by a Black woman to have a wide release, “Daughters of the Dust” was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2004.The New York Times critic A.O. Scott wrote in 2020 that “Daughters of the Dust,” which tells the story of Gullah women off the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia in the early 20th century, “has sent ripples of influence through the culture,” inspiring the imagery in Beyoncé’s visual album “Lemonade” and the director Sofia Coppola’s aesthetic. Ava DuVernay, the director of “Selma,” also regularly cites the film as an influence.Ms. Dash, in a remembrance for the International Documentary Association, wrote, “We remain forever grateful for Michelle and team KJM3 for the initial run of ‘Daughters of the Dust’ in 1992; it would not have been a success without them.”From left, Barbara-O Jones, Trula Hoosier and Alva Rogers in Julie Dash’s ‘“Daughters of the Dust,” one of the first films handled by Ms. Materre’s distribution company, KJM3 Entertainment Group.Cohen Media Group/Everett CollectionKJM3 Entertainment was formed in 1992 and released 23 films before it ceased operation in 2001. Another of the company’s most influential distribution efforts was “L’Homme Sur Les Quais” (“The Man by the Shore”) (1993), a drama by Raoul Peck, the Haitian auteur who went on to direct “I Am Not Your Negro,” the 2016 documentary about race in America based on the writings of James Baldwin.Ms. Materre’s passion for bringing unsung masterworks to wider audiences animated her career. In 1999, she started Creatively Speaking, an effort to package short films from underrepresented filmmakers into full-length programs organized thematically. It has grown into a major cultural player, holding regular screenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and educational panels about diversity in filmmaking at the New School and elsewhere.“One Way or Another: Black Women’s Cinema, 1970-1991,” which compiled short films into a longer project, was one acclaimed Creatively Speaking project. In 2017, The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called it the most important repertory series of the year.In a 2019 interview for the New School, Ms. Materre said she started Creatively Speaking because she saw a lack of opportunity — a theme throughout her career.“I found that there weren’t very many outlets for filmmakers of color and women filmmakers who hadn’t reached the possibility of making feature films yet,” she said. “They were making short films — all these amazing short films, but nobody was ever seeing them.”Once she began producing these films, she added, “people gravitated towards them like crazy.”In the International Documentary Association tribute, Leslie Fields-Cruz, the executive director of Black Public Media, wrote that Ms. Materre “understood why Black films need special attention when it comes to distribution and engagement.”“There are multiple generations of filmmakers, curators, distributors and media arts administrators,” she wrote, “whose lives and careers have been impacted simply because Michelle took the time to listen and to care.”Ms. Materre, right, with Kathryn Bowser of KJM3 Entertainment, left, and Kay Shaw of the National Black Programming Consortium at the premiere of the film “Follow Me Home” in New York in 1997. Ozier Muhammad/The New York TimesMichelle Angelina Materre was born on May 12, 1954, in Chicago. Her father, Oscar Materre, was a Chicago firefighter and owned a paint business. Her mother, Eloise (Michael) Materre, was a real estate agent.She grew up in Chicago and attended the Chicago Latin School. She then earned a B.S. in education from Boston State College and a master’s in educational media from Boston College.In 1975, she married Jose Masso, a Boston public-school teacher. They divorced in 1977. She married Dennis Burroughs, a production technician, in 1990; that marriage, too, ended in divorce. She is survived by her sisters, Paula and Judi Materre. Ms. Materre’s work at Creatively Speaking was centered in New York City; in addition to distributing films, she often organized panels and screenings of little-seen works like “Charcoal” (2017), the Haitian director Francesca Andre’s short film on colorism and skin lightening practices in the Black community.Ms. Materre consulted on the production and distribution of numerous films and served on the boards of the Black Documentary Collective, New York Women in Film and Television, and other groups promoting underrepresented filmmakers.In 2000 she began teaching at the New School in New York City, where her courses focused on diversity and inclusion in media.In a remembrance for The New School Free Press, Ms. Materre’s colleague Terri Bowles, with whom she taught a course at the New School, wrote, “She radiated a love of media and cinema, immersing her students, colleagues and friends in the vernaculars of the image, its myriad presentations and its critical importance.” More

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      Estelle Harris, George’s Mother on ‘Seinfeld,’ Dies at 93

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      Employing a high-powered screech, she took maternal exasperation and paranoia to comedic heights as one of the show’s most frequently recurring characters.Estelle Harris, who hyperventilated her way into the hearts of millions of “Seinfeld” fans as George’s mother, Estelle Costanza, died on Saturday in Palm Desert, Calif. She was 93.Her son Glen Harris announced the death in a statement sent by Ms. Harris’s agent.In 27 episodes — starting in 1992 during the fourth season of “Seinfeld,” around the time that the show became a pop culture sensation, and continuing until its final episode in 1998 — Ms. Harris embarrassed and harangued her son, one of the show’s four main characters, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and his father, Frank (Jerry Stiller).During her character’s meltdowns, often in response to slights and offenses to propriety, Ms. Harris deployed a screech that had the urgency of a hyena in its death throes. When she whined about “waiting for hours,” that final word had three, maybe four moan-like syllables. The combination of stiffness and violence in her gesticulations expressed a forbidding level of psychological tension.Ms. Harris knew how to make outrage into a joke.“You don’t play comedy,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1995. “It’s like that Jewish expression ‘crying laughter.’ All through the centuries the Jews had such terrible things happen to them that they had to laugh a little harder.”Her “Seinfeld” debut was one of the series’ most famous episodes: “The Contest.” After George’s mother catches him having a private moment with one of her issues of Glamour magazine, she falls in shock, throws out her back and enters a hospital.“I go out for a quart of milk; I come home and find my son treating his body like it was an amusement park,” Ms. Harris said. “Too bad you can’t do that for a living” — and now, with her voice rising, she used her working-class New Yorker’s accent to milk the script’s sarcasm: “You could sell out Madison Square GAAARDEN. Thousands of people could watch you. You could be a BIIIG STARRR.”That set the template for her subsequent appearances, including on other beloved episodes like “The Fusilli Jerry” (1995) and “The Rye” (1996). She began her scenes in a sane register of a volatile emotion — recrimination, self-pity, bafflement — and by the end of the sequence arrived at an outburst so intense it could only be farcical.Ms. Harris’s success in the role led to other opportunities to play the shrill and unhinged, including in the “Toy Story” movie franchise, for which she provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head.At the height of the popularity of “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris found herself with the kind of celebrity that drew looks on the street. Something in the emotionality with which she portrayed Estelle Costanza had prompted fond recognition in a national audience.“Black people, Asians, WASPs, Italians, Jews — they all say, ‘Oh, you’re just like my mom,’” she told The Tribune.Estelle Nussbaum was born on April 22, 1928, in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, where her Polish-Jewish parents owned a candy store. She grew up largely in Tarentum, Pa., a coal-mining town where her parents moved to help relatives run a general store and to provide Estelle a gentler setting for her childhood.Though she faced antisemitic taunts in her small town, Estelle found an outlet in stage performances. Her father, who she said “spoke the King’s English,” insisted that she take elocution lessons from a young age.Ms. Harris in 2010 at the premiere of “Toy Story 3” in Hollywood. She provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head in the movie.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesShe moved back to New York in her late teens and later married Sy Harris, a salesman of window treatments. They had three children, and for a while, Ms. Harris was a homemaker.She wound her way through dinner theaters and television commercials, including a 1983 spot for Handi-Wrap: “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that cling: doo-wrap, doo-wrap, doo-wrap,” she sang with schmaltzy enthusiasm.After her big break on “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris’s other major credits included the movies “Out to Sea” (1997), starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and “My Giant” (1998), with Billy Crystal.Mr. Harris died last year. In addition to her son Glen, Ms. Harris is survived by another son, Eric; a daughter, Taryn; three grandsons; and a great-grandson.In her Tribune profile, Ms. Harris said she had complained to Larry David, the co-creator of “Seinfeld,” about her character’s constant yelling, but experience proved him right: “The more I yell, the more they laugh,” she said.Ms. Harris admitted that her personal life prepared her for the part.“I yell at my husband, but he doesn’t mind,” she said. “He’s grateful for the attention.”Tiffany May More

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      Stream These 10 Titles Before They Leave Netflix This Month

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      U.S. subscribers are losing a bunch of titles in April. Here are the best of the bunch.Oscar season is over (finally), but this month’s slate of movies leaving Netflix in the United States is full of winners and nominees past and present, as well as a handful of cult items and action epics. Toss these titles — nine movies and one favorite ’90s TV show — into your list before they’re gone. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ (April 4)Although his most recent feature, the Oscar-winning “The Favourite,” was decidedly more audience friendly, the Greek writer and director Yorgos Lanthimos has carved out a niche as one of the more provocative (sometimes mercilessly so) filmmakers of his time. After his first English language film, the pitch-black comedy “The Lobster,” he reunited with Colin Farrell for this heavy slab of psychological horror about a heart surgeon whose strange friendship with a twisted teenage boy (Barry Keoghan) prompts a series of horrifying events. Lanthimos masterfully creates a feeling of creeping dread and uncomfortable uncertainty, much of it thanks to Keoghan, who harnesses a truly disturbing screen presence; like Farrell, he is in “The Batman,” and moviegoers who thought that was a bleak picture may find this one too hard to swallow.Stream it here.‘The Florida Project’ (April 5)Sean Baker is one of our most adventurous and emotionally curious filmmakers, his work dropping in on highly specific subcultures and scenes without feeling distanced or anthropological. In this 2017 comedy-drama, he settles in to “The Magic Castle,” a budget motel located near Walt Disney World, its clientele a mix of hoodwinked tourists and struggling long-timers like Halley (Bria Vinaite) and her six-year-old daughter, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince). Baker carefully situates his contrast of haves and have-nots; Disney World is only a short walk away, but the lives enjoyed by its patrons seem impossibly out of reach. Willem Dafoe picked up a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his work as the motel’s good-natured manager.Stream it here.‘Miss Sloane’ (April 18)The newly minted Oscar winner Jessica Chastain stars in this political thriller from John Madden (the “Shakespeare in Love” director, not the other one) as a tough-as-nails D.C. lobbyist who finds herself in the sights of the powerful gun lobby. Chastain made a specialty of these sturdy, sharp women who get the job done — the character is not far removed from her roles in “Zero Dark Thirty,” “A Most Violent Year,” and “Molly’s Game” — but she finds the shadings and contours that make the character unique while Jonathan Perera’s smart screenplay feels like an authentic peek at how the sausage is made in Washington.Stream it here.‘The Artist’ (April 25)Oscar loves movies about the movies, and this 2011 comedy from the writer and director Michel Hazanavicius (which won five prizes, including best picture) isn’t just a film about the industry: It is steeped in stylistic and narrative influences from throughout film history. Hazanavicius tells his story of the bumpy transition from silent to sound cinema by dramatizing that transition, recalling the inside-Hollywood angle of “Singin’ in the Rain”; the secondary story, about a fading star’s romance with a rising talent, evokes the many remakes of “A Star is Born.” Yet “The Artist” isn’t just a game of “spot the homage.” The filmmaking is clever and the performances are inspired, particularly those of the best actor winner Jean Dujardin, of the best supporting actress nominee Bérénice Bejo and of John Goodman, cast perfectly as a cigar-chomping studio head.Stream it here.‘Dawson’s Creek’: Seasons 1-6 (April 30)Fresh off the success of his script for the original “Scream,” the screenwriter Kevin Williamson got the greenlight from the nascent WB network to create this long-running drama, chronicling the lives of loves of a group of teens in the fictional hamlet of Capeside, Mass. Williamson’s winkingly self-aware style doesn’t go down quite as smoothly here as it does in the “Scream” films, but it offers its own trashy pleasures, its scripts rife with romances and hookups and unrequited crushes. And the show is now noteworthy for its keen casting eye: Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, James Van Der Beek and Michelle Williams make up the core ensemble, with Scott Foley, Jane Lynch, Busy Philipps and Seth Rogen among the recurring cast.Stream it here.‘Léon: The Professional’ (April 30)Natalie Portman made her film debut in this 1994 action picture from the French writer and director Luc Besson (“La Femme Nikita”), playing a young woman whose family is executed by corrupt D.E.A. agents. She talks her enigmatic neighbor (Jean Reno) into providing not only refuge but also training; he is a contract killer, and she wants revenge. Besson stages a series of spectacular set pieces, each more ingenious than the last, culminating in a barn burner in which Leon seems to take on the entire New York Police Department. Portman is already a movie star, and Reno is quietly effective — an excellent counterpoint to Gary Oldman, who chews scenery by the fistful as the most unhinged of the bad guys.Stream it here.‘Snakes on a Plane’ (April 30)This 2006 action film from David R. Ellis was one of the first films that was, in effect, rewritten by the internet. Based solely on its title and the presence of Samuel L. Jackson, the movie became something of a viral sensation before its release, prompting its filmmakers to reshoot scenes and rework the tone to mirror more closely the goofy B-movie its “fans” had come to expect. The result is a bit of a mess, particularly in its laborious first act. But once the snakes start to attack at the 30-minute mark, it’s goofy, gory fun, a spirited riff on ’70s disaster movies, with an abundance of gruesome but funny shock effects and an admirably game performance from the unflappable Jackson.Stream it here.‘Snatch’ (April 30)The director Guy Ritchie made a big splash on the indie circuit with his low-budget, high-energy crime comedy “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” in 1999; this successor was also a kind of bigger-budget remake, pursuing similar situations and aesthetics but with more resources and bigger names. Chief among the big name actors is Brad Pitt, who appears under a mop of messy hair and barks most of his dialogue in an indecipherable dialect — hinting at the character-actor work he pursued, as a sideline, as he approached middle age. “Snatch” is fast, funny and flashy; it is style over substance, sure, but what style.Stream it here.‘Stripes’ (April 30)Three years before achieving total cultural ubiquity with “Ghostbusters,” Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and the director Ivan Reitman teamed up for this uproariously funny service comedy. Murray and Ramis (who was also one of the writers) play slacker pals who, more out of boredom than patriotic duty, enlist in the U.S. Army, where they do their best to turn the disciplined, humorless environment of basic training into a nonstop party. It’s like Abbott & Costello’s “Buck Privates” crossed with “Animal House,” and it’s exactly as fun as that sounds. Warren Oates is a superb foil as their drill sergeant, while John Candy, Joe Flaherty, John Larroquette, Judge Reinhold, P.J. Soles, Dave Thomas and Sean Young turn up in memorable supporting roles.Stream it here.‘The Town’ (April 30)Ben Affleck followed the triumph of his feature directorial debut, “Gone Baby Gone,” with this taut and gripping crime picture, adapted from the Chuck Hogan novel “Prince of Thieves.” Affleck co-wrote, directed and stars as Doug MacRay, the ringleader of a group of tough Boston thieves who hatch a plot to steal millions in cash from Fenway Park — a heist complicated by shifting allegiances, a tenacious F.B.I. agent (Jon Hamm) and Doug’s blossoming romance with a potential witness (Rebecca Hall). Affleck’s sure hand with actors — Chris Cooper, Blake Lively, Pete Postlethwaite and Jeremy Renner round out the ensemble — and his firm sense of time and place give the film a confidence that more than makes up for the familiarity of its storytelling.Stream it here.Also leaving: ‘August: Osage County’ (April 26); ‘Moneyball,’ ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ ‘Superman Returns’ (April 30). More

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      ‘Macbeth’ performances on Broadway pause after Daniel Craig tests positive for the coronavirus.

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      The show, which just began previews on Tuesday, hopes to resume on April 8.Daniel Craig, who is starring in the title role of a new Broadway production of “Macbeth,” tested positive for the coronavirus on Saturday, forcing the show to cancel most of next week’s performances.The show, which just began previews on Tuesday and is scheduled to open April 28, had already canceled Friday night’s performance, citing another positive coronavirus test among cast members, when on Saturday it canceled both the matinee and an evening performance, citing Mr. Craig’s positive test. Then, late Saturday night, the production said that it was canceling all performances until April 8 “due to the detection of a limited number of positive covid test results within the company.”Coronavirus cases have recently been rising in New York City, and several Broadway performers have tested positive. In most instances, shows have been able to turn to understudies to keep going, but because “Macbeth” had just begun performances, it had not yet fully rehearsed the understudies.All Broadway actors — in fact, all workers in Broadway theaters — are required to be fully vaccinated. Broadway also currently requires that ticket holders be fully vaccinated and wear masks except when eating and drinking; on Friday, the theater owners and operators said that those rules would remain in place at least through April 30, and that they would decide by April 15 whether to retain, alter or drop the audience protocols after the end of the month.“Macbeth,” of course, is a well-known and much-loved tragedy by William Shakespeare, and this revival has been one of the most anticipated productions of the spring on Broadway. Mr. Craig, who is fresh off his long run playing James Bond on film, had repeatedly said he wanted to be part of Broadway’s efforts to rebound after the industry’s long pandemic shutdown.Mr. Craig is starring opposite Ruth Negga, as Lady Macbeth, in the production, which is directed by Sam Gold. The show does not have much leeway — it is already scheduled to be the last production to open this season, and its opening night is on the final day when shows can open to qualify for this year’s Tony Awards. More

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      Will Smith’s Slap Could Hurt His Family’s Brand

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      Will Smith has spent decades radiating boundless likability. His family has become known for sharing therapy sessions online. His smack at the Oscars has complicated all of that.From his start as a goofy, G-rated rapper and sitcom star through his carefully managed rise as a blockbuster action hero, Will Smith has spent decades radiating boundless likability. But his amiable image was something of a facade, he wrote in his memoir, noting that a therapist had nicknamed his nice guy persona “Uncle Fluffy.”Mr. Smith said he had concocted this people-pleasing demeanor as a means of deflection during his turbulent childhood. “As an adult, he became my armor and my shield,” he wrote. “Uncle Fluffy paid the bills.”Mr. Smith wrote that he had another, less public, side: “the General,” a punisher who emerged when joviality didn’t get the job done. “When the General shows up, people are shocked and confused,” he wrote in “Will,” his 2021 memoir. “It was sweetness, sweetness, sweetness and then sour, sour, sourness.”Both sides of Mr. Smith, 53, were on display on one of the world’s biggest stages last week when he suddenly slapped the comedian Chris Rock during the telecast of the Academy Awards ceremony, complaining that Mr. Rock had insulted his wife of 25 years, Jada Pinkett Smith, with a joke. Soon afterward, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor, and wept through his polarizing acceptance speech. Then he was off to the Vanity Fair party, dancing to “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It,” his chart-topping hit from the last century, as though nothing had happened.Now Mr. Smith has resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that just honored him with an Oscar, and which has condemned his actions and opened disciplinary proceedings against him. And he is confronting the very real possibility that a night which should have been the crowning moment of his professional career could wind up damaging a family brand rooted in his seemingly-authentic congeniality.For several years, a growing branch of Smith family enterprises has adeptly delivered reality-style revelation and emotional intimacy across an expanding number of platforms. Beyond Mr. Smith’s acting career and his introspective, best-selling memoir, there is the popular “Red Table Talk” show on Facebook Watch, in which Ms. Pinkett Smith, their daughter, Willow, and Jada’s mother, Adrienne Banfield Norris, hold forth on everything from racial identity to workout routines to the Smiths’ unconventional marriage.Mr. Smith’s upcoming projects include “Emancipation,” a $100 million, high-prestige drama for Apple; an action thriller at Netflix; a remake of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” where he would star opposite Kevin Hart for Paramount; and the second installment of a travel series for National Geographic on Disney+. They are all under the banner of Westbrook Studios, the film and television arm of the media company that the Smith family started in 2019. It was valued at $600 million earlier this year when an investment firm bought a 10 percent stake.Could The Slap derail all that?It was not clear whether the incident would affect any of his current projects, like “Welcome to Earth” for National Geographic on Disney+.Disney+, via Associated PressNow that Mr. Smith may not be welcome at the Oscars and his public reputation has been tarnished, studios may be wary of hiring him at the moment for lead roles in their biggest films. The companies behind Mr. Smith’s upcoming projects declined to comment on whether they were altering their plans in light of recent events. But three talent agents, who were granted anonymity to describe private negotiations, said there had been indications that at least some of his upcoming projects could be hanging in the balance.Several public relations specialists who focus on crisis management warned that the incident could erode the good will that the Smiths have built up, while others suggested the fallout could be contained. “His brand is currently damaged goods worldwide,” said Mike Paul, a public relations expert. The Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith, who the academy said refused to leave following the incident, apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the academy denounced his actions.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.The veteran television producer Jonathan Murray, who has dealt with on- and offscreen drama and family brands in programming like “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” said that the outcome for the Smiths depends on what steps they, and particularly Mr. Smith, take now.“I think most people would give him the benefit of the doubt,” said Mr. Murray, a co-founder of the production company Bunim Murray, which pioneered reality TV. “But it really will rest on whether we believe that he is authentically dealing with this.”Several friends and colleagues of Mr. Smith described the Oscars altercation as a puzzling aberration for a man who has spent his career almost fanatically hewing to professional standards.“What happened was inconsistent with any behavior I’ve seen working with Will Smith,” said Elizabeth Cantillon, a producer of “Concussion,” the 2015 film in which he played a doctor battling the N.F.L. “He was always exquisite. I think he’s part of the collective breakdown we are all having.”The incident came as Mr. Smith has appeared to be in a period of transition: seeking out loftier and more personal roles; expanding his media empire beyond film and television; openly discussing the abuse he witnessed his father inflict on his mother; and working on what he has described as self-understanding, through therapy, meditation and even hallucinogens.“Strategizing about being the biggest movie star in the world — that is all completely over,” Mr. Smith said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in December. He added: “I want to take roles where I get to look at myself, where I get to look at my family, I get to look at ideas that are important to me. Everything in my life is more centered on spiritual growth and elevation.”Mr. Smith starred on the NBC sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” in the 1990s.Alice S. Hall/NBC, via Getty ImagesMr. Smith, a Philadelphia native, started performing as a teenager in the ’80s, in the rap duo D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and quickly earned a Grammy — the first ever for best rap performance — for “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” A chance encounter with the producer Quincy Jones led to him starring in the hit NBC sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” which ran from 1990 to 1996, featuring a hip-hop theme many children of that era can still recite. It was perhaps the last bit of his career that happened by accident. (Mr. Smith’s company recently developed “Bel-Air,” a dramatic reboot which just finished its first of two seasons on Peacock as the nascent streamer’s most-watched original series.)Mr. Smith then set out to make himself the biggest movie star in the world, and by many measures succeeded. With a business partner, James Lassiter, Mr. Smith plotted out, with actuarial zeal, the commonalities among hit movies: special effects, aliens, a love story. He became the face of summer blockbusters, with films including “Men in Black” and “Independence Day.” In his memoir, written with Mark Manson, he provides a handy, if boastful, chart of his prowess: from 2002 to 2008, he had eight consecutive films gross more than $100 million domestically.For the fans, he was always accommodating. But the mantle was heavy.“I am a Black man in Hollywood — in order to sustain my position, I can’t get caught slipping, not even once,” Mr. Smith wrote in his book. “I had to be perfect at all times.”Mr. Smith became the face of summer blockbusters with a string of hit films, including “Men in Black” with Tommy Lee Jones.Columbia Pictures/Getty ImagesPart of the image that Mr. Smith sought to project had to do with his seemingly-enviable family life: his creatively inclined children — Willow, 21, his son Jaden, 23, and Trey, 29, a son from his first marriage — and his union with Ms. Pinkett Smith, 50, an actress and musician. That portrait of stability cracked in recent years, especially when Ms. Pinkett Smith acknowledged, in a 2020 episode of “Red Table Talk,” that the couple had gone through a separation, during which she had been involved in what she called an “entanglement” with an R&B singer, August Alsina.Leveraging “Red Table Talk” as a sort of public therapy session, the Smiths have laid bare the details of some of their fiercest disputes, sometimes in the presence of Willow and Ms. Banfield Norris, Mr. Smith’s mother-in-law, who is known to viewers as Gammy. In one episode in 2018 the Smiths sought to dispel rumors, noting that they are neither swingers nor Scientologists, after reports over the years that they had donated money to causes affiliated with Scientology.“We have devoted ourselves to each other in a spiritual sense — spiritual, emotional — it’s like whatever she needs, she can count on me for the rest of her life,” Mr. Smith said in the episode. “We don’t have any deal breakers.”On “Red Table Talk,” their Facebook Watch show, topics include everything from racial identity to the Smiths’ unconventional marriage. Facebook WatchThe revelations about their marriage were met with public derision, including on the awards circuit. In mid-March, at the BAFTAs, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars, the host, the comedian Rebel Wilson, joked about it when she mentioned Mr. Smith’s win for “King Richard.”“Personally,” she said, “I thought his best performance in the past year has been being OK with all of his wife’s boyfriends.” Mr. Smith was not present at that ceremony.At this year’s Academy Awards, even before Mr. Rock took the stage, Regina Hall alluded to the Smiths’ relationship in a comic bit in which she suggestively asked to personally inspect some of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors, joking that their Covid test results had been lost. “Will Smith,” she said. “You’re married, but you know what, you’re on the list and looks like Jada approved you. So you get on up here.” He laughed and stayed seated.What did bring Mr. Smith to his feet, striding purposefully across the room to strike Mr. Rock, was an ad-libbed line about Ms. Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. It stung, Mr. Smith explained later, because Ms. Pinkett Smith has alopecia, which leads to hair loss. “A joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear, and I reacted emotionally,” Mr. Smith explained in the apology to Mr. Rock and others he posted on Instagram Monday evening. For his part, Mr. Rock said at his comedy show on Wednesday that he was still processing the event. (A representative for Mr. Smith declined to comment. Representatives for Ms. Pinkett Smith and Mr. Rock did not respond to requests for comment.)For many viewers and fans, especially Black fans, the incident involving three of the highest-profile Black artists in Hollywood was fraught and did not lend itself to easy judgment. “It’s a really complicated moment, because of all the ways that it resonates with gender and race and power and brand,” said Miriam Petty, a film historian and professor at Northwestern University who studies Black stardom.Some commentators criticized Mr. Rock for what they deemed a low-blow joke. Others, like the actress Tiffany Haddish, who co-starred with Ms. Pinkett Smith in the comedy “Girls Trip,” applauded Mr. Smith for seeming to defend his wife’s honor, which Dr. Petty characterized as understandable in a world in which Black women and other women of color are not afforded the same social protections as their white counterparts. But was that stance anti-feminist? Did it glorify violence? “Again — messy, messy, messy,” Dr. Petty said.Since turning 50, Mr. Smith has relaxed, to some degree, his public image. A recent YouTube series, “Best Shape of My Life,” that ostensibly targeted his non-superhero dad bod was really about unbuckling his own strictures of behavior. He has traveled without security for the first time in years; at last learned to swim; and tried to come to terms, after the death of his father in 2016, with the toll that relationship took.In the statement announcing his resignation from the academy, Mr. Smith said, “Change takes time and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.”Now, as Mr. Smith seeks to rebound from this episode, he seems all but certain to do it with his family around him. In the aftermath of the Oscars, Ms. Pinkett Smith posted a message on Instagram: “This is a season for healing,” it read, using a watchword well-known to the 11 million Facebook followers of “Red Table Talk.” “And I’m here for it.”Julia Jacobs contributed reporting. Susan Beachy contributed research. More

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      Helping Hollywood Avoid Claims of Bias Is Now a Growing Business

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      Studios are signing up consultants to help make sure their movies or shows don’t raise any cultural red flags.In the summer of 2020, not long after the murder of George Floyd spurred a racial reckoning in America, Carri Twigg’s phone kept ringing.Ms. Twigg, a founding partner of a production company named Culture House, was asked over and over again if she could take a look at a television or movie script and raise any red flags, particularly on race.Culture House, which employs mostly women of color, had traditionally specialized in documentaries. But after a few months of fielding the requests about scripts, they decided to make a business of it: They opened a new division dedicated solely to consulting work.“The frequency of the check-ins was not slowing down,” Ms. Twigg said. “It was like, oh, we need to make this a real thing that we offer consistently — and get paid for.”Though the company has been consulting for a little more than a year — for clients like Paramount Pictures, MTV and Disney — that work now accounts for 30 percent of Culture House’s revenue.Culture House is hardly alone. In recent years, entertainment executives have vowed to make a genuine commitment to diversity, but are still routinely criticized for falling short. To signal that they are taking steps to address the issue, Hollywood studios have signed contracts with numerous companies and nonprofits to help them avoid the reputational damage that comes with having a movie or an episode of a TV show face accusations of bias.“When a great idea is there and then it’s only talked about because of the social implications, that must be heartbreaking for creators who spend years on something,” Ms. Twigg said. “To get it into the world and the only thing anyone wants to talk about are the ways it came up short. So we’re trying to help make that not happen.”On Being Transgender in AmericaElite Sports: The case of the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has stirred a debate about the nature of athleticism in women’s sports.Transgender Youth: A photographer documented the lives of transgender youth. She shared some thoughts on what she saw.Remote Work: Remote work during the pandemic offered some people an opportunity to move forward with a transition. They are now preparing to return to the office.Corporate World: What is it like to transition while working for Wall Street? A Goldman Sachs’ employee shares her experience.The consulting work runs the gamut of a production. The consulting companies sometimes are asked about casting decisions as well as marketing plans. And they may also read scripts to search for examples of bias and to scrutinize how characters are positioned in a story.“It’s not only about what characters say, it’s also about when they don’t speak,” Ms. Twigg said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, there’s not enough agency for this character, you’re using this character as an ornament, you’re going to get dinged for that.’”When a consulting firm is on retainer, it can also come with a guaranteed check every month from a studio. And it’s a revenue stream developed only recently.Michelle K. Sugihara, the executive director of Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, a nonprofit.Tracy Nguyen for The New York Times“It really exploded in the last two years or so,” said Michelle K. Sugihara, the executive director of Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, a nonprofit. The group, called CAPE, is on retainer to some of the biggest Hollywood studios, including Netflix, Paramount, Warner Bros., Amazon, Sony and A24.Of the 100 projects that CAPE has consulted on, Ms. Sugihara said, roughly 80 percent have come since 2020, and they “really increased” after the Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021. “That really ramped up attention on our community,” she said.Ms. Sugihara said her group could be actively involved throughout the production process. In one example, she said she told a studio that all of the actors playing the heroes in an upcoming scripted project appeared to be light-skinned East Asian people whereas the villains were portrayed by darker-skinned East Asian actors.“That’s a red flag,” she said. “And we should talk about how those images may be harmful. Sometimes it’s just things that people aren’t even conscious about until you point it out.”Ms. Sugihara would not mention the name of the project or the studio behind it. In interviews, many cited nondisclosure agreements with the studios and a reluctance to embarrass a filmmaker as reasons they could not divulge specifics.Studios such as Paramount Pictures have been hiring consulting firms like Culture House and CAPE.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesSarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD, the L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization, said her group had been doing consulting work informally for years with the networks and studios. Finally, she decided to start charging the studios for their labor — work that she compared to “billable hours.”“Here we were consulting with all these content creators across Hollywood and not being compensated,” said Ms. Ellis, the organization’s president since 2013. “When I started at GLAAD we couldn’t pay our bills. And meanwhile here we are with the biggest studios and networks in the world, helping them tell stories that were hits. And I said this doesn’t make sense.”In 2018, she created the GLAAD Media Institute — if the networks or studios wanted any help in the future, they’d have to become a paying member of the institute.Initially, there was some pushback but the networks and studios would eventually come around. In 2018, there were zero members of the GLAAD Media Institute. By the end of 2021, that number had swelled to 58, with nearly every major studio and network in Hollywood now a paying member.Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD, the advocacy organization, at its office in Manhattan.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesScott Turner Schofield, who has spent some time working as a consultant for GLAAD, has also been advising networks and studios on how to accurately depict transgender people for years. But he said the work had increased so significantly in recent years that he was brought on board as an executive producer for a forthcoming horror movie produced by Blumhouse.“I’ve gone from someone who was a part-time consultant — barely eking by — to being an executive producer,” he said.Those interviewed said that it was a win-win arrangement between the consultancies and the studios.“The studios at the end of the day, they want to produce content but they want to make money,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the advocacy organization Color of Change. “Making money can be impeded because of poor decisions and not having the right people at the table. So the studios are going to want to seek that.”He did caution, however, that simply bringing on consultants was not an adequate substitute for the structural change that many advocates want to see in Hollywood.“This doesn’t change the rules with who gets to produce content and who gets to make the final decisions of what gets on the air,” he said. “It’s fine to bring folks in from the outside but that in the end is insufficient to the fact that across the entertainment industry there is still a problem in terms of not enough Black and brown people with power in the executive ranks.”Still, the burgeoning field of cultural consultancy work may be here to stay. Ms. Twigg, who helped found Culture House with Raeshem Nijhon and Nicole Galovski, said that the volume of requests she was getting was “illustrative of how seriously it’s being taken, and how comprehensively it’s being brought into the fabric of doing business.”“From a business standpoint, it’s a way for us to capitalize on the expertise that we have gathered as people of color who have been alive in America for 30 or 40 years,” she said. More

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      Using Film to Tell a Personal History of America and Race

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      With “Who We Are,” the lecturer Jeffery Robinson and the directors Emily and Sarah Kunstler follow in the tradition of documentaries that excavate our past.For over a decade, Jeffery Robinson has been telling an unvarnished history of the United States in an ever-evolving lecture presentation. His talks, now presented as part of his organization, the Who We Are Project, delve into how racism against Black people was bound up with the country’s legacy since its founding. The new documentary, “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America,” captures Robinson’s eye-opening account (filmed at Town Hall in New York City) and intersperses interviews with civil rights figures and others from his travels across the country.The film, directed by Emily and Sarah Kunstler, joins a lineage of documentaries that excavate race and the histories of marginalized people in America, like Raoul Peck’s “I Am Not Your Negro” and Ava DuVernay’s “13th.”“This is not ‘Eyes on the Prize,’” Robinson said of the new movie, which is available on major digital platforms. “But I think it is a call to us being something radically different going forward.”Reviewing “Who We Are” for The Times, Ben Kenigsberg made it a Critic’s Pick and wrote, “It’s a confrontational film, but never an alienating one.”Robinson, a criminal defense lawyer by profession, was the director of the A.C.L.U.’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality in New York, and he remembers walking past the former Cotton Exchange on the way to work. I spoke with him and the Kunstlers (whose last feature, “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe,” was about their father, the civil rights attorney). These are excerpts from our interview.“Who We Are” partly aims to chart the role of white supremacy in U.S. history. How did you approach that?JEFFERY ROBINSON I say it as a rhetorical question in the film: “What if I said America was founded on white supremacy? Somebody might say, ‘Jeff, that’s really extreme.’” But when you read the words of the people that founded our country and see what they did, I think it’s an inescapable conclusion. Some people have said the Constitution was a compromise between those who wanted slavery and those who didn’t want slavery. This “compromise” protected the institution of slavery, gave the South extra congressional representatives and Electoral College votes to protect the institution of slavery, and made Black attempts to be free unconstitutional. It was unconstitutional for me to try and get away from my owner!SARAH KUNSTLER And they accomplished all of that without using the word slavery. We have a history of hiding what we mean as a country. When we enact laws preserving and maintaining white supremacy, we don’t actually say what it is that we’re doing.ROBINSON There is no way you can associate white supremacy with a law that says you cannot change the name of iconic monuments in the state of Alabama — until you understand that these are all monuments to slavery, essentially, and to people that enslaved people.Robinson with Josephine Bolling McCall, the author of a book about her father’s lynching in Alabama in 1947.Jesse Wakeman/Sony Pictures ClassicsThe film also uncovers the details of lived Black experience: for example, the fingerprints that enslaved builders left behind on walls they made.EMILY KUNSTLER The facts in the abstract don’t mean anything if you can’t connect them to actual human experience. Those fingerprints are one example of a monument to a history of lived experience of enslaved Black people in Charleston, S.C., and in fact, all over this country, that despite the best efforts to erase them, persist. The same way the foundations for the houses in Tulsa, Okla., [site of the 1921 massacre], still exist where the homes were never rebuilt.ROBINSON There was a moment when we were talking with Mother Randle [a survivor of the Tulsa massacre] and she was saying, “There was a pile of bodies.” There was just a chill that went up and down my spine — this woman over 100 years old going back to that memory in her life.Jeffery, how did it feel to share your, and your family’s, experiences of racism, like the school basketball game where the hosts didn’t want you to play?ROBINSON We went to Dr. Tiffany Crutcher and asked her to talk about her feelings about her brother being killed on live television, practically, by the Tulsa police [in 2016]. And it felt like, All right, I should share something. Dick [a basketball coach who stuck up for Robinson] was 21 years old at the time this incident happened in Walls, Miss. This is just several years after civil rights workers got disappeared and murdered in Mississippi. Where he got the courage to handle that the way he did, I just don’t know. But it was clear that if I didn’t play, we were all leaving. And he wasn’t going to put that on me at 12 years old. I think he saw me as essentially his younger brother.Could you talk about including the conversation about slavery with a man you encountered at a Confederate statue who represented Flags Across the South, the pro-Confederate flag group?EMILY KUNSTLER I felt like it encompassed the thesis of the film. I asked Jeff, “Do you think that that gentleman could be reached?” And Jeff said, “I don’t know if he can be reached, but I know that if nobody tries, he certainly won’t be.” There’s value in making the effort, there’s value in laying out the facts and continuing to do so. We can’t be frightened into silence by people who think differently, speak very loudly, and come out in force and wave Confederate flags.ROBINSON The conversation didn’t go the way he perhaps thought it was going to go in terms of me getting angry at him or something. There’s a little twitch in his face as we were leaving, and I think we at least made some wheels turn in his head.How does the movie relate to the controversy around laws banning the teaching of certain American history?ROBINSON The first time we met in person to talk about this [movie] was June 20, 2017. No one was even talking about CRT [Critical Race Theory] back then. It would have been like, “What is that, a breakfast cereal or something?” So this was not done in response to those laws. But those laws coming up can tell you how afraid people are of the information that’s in this film.This goes to the concept of “the minds of the rising generation.” All the way back in 1837, John C. Calhoun, one of the most virulent racists in American history, was saying that we can’t teach children in school about the abolition of slavery, because if we teach that, slavery is done for. The day before the [Trump] administration left office, they put out something called “The 1776 Report” that talked about a return to patriotic education, and they use the exact same quote that John C. Calhoun did: “the minds of the rising generation.”SARAH KUNSTLER Before there were anti-CRT laws, there were textbook wars. So there’s an unending battle of what and how much our children are taught in school about our nation’s history. One of the most compelling things about Jeff’s talk is that he goes back to primary sources. You don’t need to just learn it in school. You can seek it out for yourself. More

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      Jerrod Carmichael Comes Out in ‘Rothaniel,’ but It’s About More

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      In “Rothaniel” on HBO, the stand-up grapples with secrets that defined his upbringing, the toll silence has taken and the price he’s paying to break it.In his 2014 debut special, “Love at the Store,” the stand-up comic Jerrod Carmichael offered advice to gay people about the right time to come out of the closet. “Save it until you need it,” he said, quipping: “I would come out of the closet when a friend asked me to move.”It’s one of many of his old jokes that hit differently after “Rothaniel,” a riveting new special from Carmichael who, sitting onstage at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York, reveals that he is gay, has been lying about it for years and wants to now tell the truth. Coming out of the closet will be the headline, especially in a stand-up scene historically rife with homophobia, but the most fascinating, charged material in this hour (premiering at 9 p.m. Friday on HBO) grapples with the roots of his silence — and the price of breaking it.Stylishly directed by Bo Burnham, who staged Carmichael’s last special, “8,” with similar idiosyncrasy, “Rothaniel” begins with a street-level shot looking up at snow falling, then follows Carmichael walking toward the club, but from so far away that you can’t make him out. As a director of specials, Burnham specializes in claustrophobic close-ups, which he employs here too, but he begins at a distance.As soon as Carmichael starts talking, you realize that he has kept us at one, too — until this reintroduction. While he has the same charming smile and supremely relaxed conversational style, he sounds different here: melancholy, earnest and poetic, direct. He’s now sitting, encouraging the crowd to talk back, speaking in an intimate tone, leveling with us and himself. Those old provocative stand-up premises only hinted at this new man, especially when they dug into family matters. “I want to talk about secrets,” he says early on here. “I felt like I was birthed into them.”This is a work about the complexity and ubiquity of secrets. It’s a word he has used before in similar ways. In his last special, he looked at a white woman in the front row who came with a Black boyfriend and said: “If his grandma were alive, you would be a secret.”Now he isn’t joking. Or he isn’t only joking. This special doesn’t feel like stand-up but it is. Carmichael is masterful at disguising punch lines in a thought so as not to interrupt its flow. The jokes are ultimately ornamental, decorating the emotional core: a story told through confessions. The initial one reveals that his first name is actually his middle name. The special’s title is a reference to his real one, a conflation of two of the names of his grandfathers. He explains in detail how much he hated the name, how he bribed yearbook editors in school to change it and got the bank to remove it from cards. It’s one of many biographical moments that illustrate how he developed the tools for the closet, how to live with things that, as he put it, “exist but don’t exist.”Much of this has to do with family history, which he has always talked about in his work but glancingly. Now he is blunt, detailing lives that also held secrets people knew but didn’t at the same time. Carmichael is alert to how pervasive they are, showing us the normal ones we don’t think much about. For example, he digs into the irony that we all are a product of our parents having sex, but none of us can stand to talk with our parents about sex.Carmichael is an incredibly poised, even chilly performer, comfortable in silences, seemingly unflappable. But what he does in this special is deconstruct this persona, reveal it as a useful mask, even an inherited one. He doesn’t just show us the roots of this façade, but also why he clung to it — and what it cost him. Some of this, like his explanation of why he smiles so much, is brutally frank. Other times it’s really funny. Being in the closet, he says, made him overcompensate: “Sometimes we’re making out,” he says about a boyfriend, “and just whisper ‘no homo’ to each other.”The heart of this show is about the painful tension between family ties and personal growth, and the most searing segments focus on his relationship with his mother. Her reaction to his sexuality, rooted in her faith, leaves him cold. The fact that he has such love for her, that he describes himself as an echo of her in some ways, makes this even more poignant. This special, which at its climax finds its star hunched in a nearly fetal posture, hits jarring notes that have never been matched in this form.It’s not just emotionally raw, but present and immediate in a way that a polished joke will never be. In one remarkable moment toward the end, he looks directly at the camera, and I physically turned away, as if it were so private that it would be impolite to watch.Art this uncomfortable tends to have rough edges, and this special does, too. But it’s artfully presented, almost to a fault. Burnham and Carmichael are such slickly skillful and assured artists that it can be hard to believe them when they get messy. Carmichael isn’t trying to tell an uplifting story so much as a real one, and “Rothaniel” does not build to a tidy resolution. It’s raw, and you might have some questions.I would recommend watching Carmichael’s lovely little 2019 documentary, “Home Videos” (also on HBO Max), shot in his hometown Winston-Salem, N.C., that features a conversation with his mother to give her some equal time. You can see the warmth between them, and his role as a needling son, asking her if she ever did cocaine or slept with a woman. When she says no, he tosses out abruptly that he hooked up with men. In a later interview, he downplayed the comment as just something he said in the moment.His mother has her story, too, though this special isn’t about that. Earlier this week, Carmichael performed at Union Hall in Brooklyn to prepare for hosting “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, an episode that will be surely dominated by bits about the Academy Awards. He joked that he was the least famous person to ever host “S.N.L.” and that all you had to do to get the gig was come out of the closet. He said he hadn’t talked to his mother in months though he once did every day.Once again, he was sitting, chatting with the crowd less than delivering a set, and seemed to be seeking something in the moment, a real experience, albeit one that could help him build a monologue. Carmichael asked the audience what he should talk about on Saturday. Someone yelled gas prices. “I’ve been rich too long,” he retorted.Another person mentioned the feud between Kanye West and Pete Davidson. Carmichael said he knew both of them through discussions about mental health and suicide. “But now,” he joked, “every time I hear about either of them I want to kill myself.”But when someone mentioned possibly doing a song, Carmichael shook his head, saying that was not in his performer’s tool kit. “I wish I was an entertainer,” he said. “My skill is I’m not afraid and I have a pocket full of matches.” More