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      Kodi Smit-McPhee on Quiet Confidence, Chronic Pain and ‘The Power of the Dog’

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      The 25-year-old Aussie delivers a scene-stealing performance as Peter, a bookish boy and aspiring doctor who’s more than he seems.This interview contains major spoilers from “The Power of the Dog.”When it came to Kodi Smit-McPhee’s performance in “The Power of the Dog,” the film’s director, Jane Campion, always wanted more.More lisp. More slinking, fox-like body movements. And — gosh darn it — more comb! (His character runs his fingers through a comb’s teeth when he’s anxious.)“I was always thinking ‘This is too much,’” said Smit-McPhee, 25, his willowy 6-foot-2 frame and wide-set eyes filling the screen in a video call from his family’s home in Melbourne, Australia. “But I tend to unconsciously underplay my characters, so it’s a constant that directors ask me to turn it up a little bit.”Smit-McPhee’s character, Peter, is the quiet heart of Campion’s western, now in theaters and streaming on Netflix: a shy teen who both irks and brings out the softer side of a masochistic cowboy, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), raising cattle in rural Montana in the 1920s. (The film was shot in Campion’s native New Zealand.)“I think the first impression is, ‘This kid’s obviously light on his feet, so delicate, possibly naïve,’” said Smit-McPhee, who, in a black T-shirt and ball cap, is self-assured and philosophical in real life. “But we come to learn he has a greater strength to him.”While Smit-McPhee read the script and Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel, he enjoyed the role’s ambiguity, which he said allowed him to arrive at his own interpretation of Peter’s motivations. He worked with an accent specialist, a body movement coach and did meditation and dream work, all in the service of challenging himself to deliver the most nuanced performance.“Jane pushed me to explore new territory,” he said. “It was only a couple of nights before I went to bed thinking, ‘I’m going to need to completely commit to this.’”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The role is the latest in a career built on sensitive, inquisitive characters. Smit-McPhee first gained notice as a son navigating a postapocalyptic hellscape with his father in the 2009 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” before playing a bullied boy who falls in love with a vampire in the 2010 horror romance “Let Me In” and the devilish but kind-at-heart Nightcrawler in the recent “X-Men” films.In an hourlong conversation, Smit-McPhee discussed how his struggle with chronic pain helped him related to Peter’s outsider status and what he makes of the film’s ending. These are edited excerpts.The first time you met with Jane Campion, in Los Angeles in 2019, she asked you to have a conversation in character as Peter. What was that like?It was very freeing and forgiving in comparison to other auditions I’ve done. From a director’s perspective, you get to see how much this actor has understood the psyche of the character and filled in the blanks in the script. I tried to get as far away from my own thoughts as possible.What in Peter do you relate to?Physically, the people around him tend to judge him to be a bit weak or not man enough. That’s something he was dealing with 100 years ago, and we’re still dealing with today — negative effects on how you view yourself when you’re told you’re not strong enough, or people assume that about you. But in the same breath, when you understand what value you bring to the world and others, you gain a confidence and a love for yourself.Smit-McPhee with Benedict Cumberbatch in the film.Kirsty Griffin/NetflixIn one scene, he dissects a rabbit he’s killed in his bedroom. Are you squeamish around blood?I’m not squeamish when it comes to blood, but I’m 100-percent squeamish when it comes to flesh being cut. My girlfriend watches these shows like “Nip/Tuck” and “Botched,” and I feel sick when I try to make myself watch those gruesome scenes. But in the spirit of Peter, I forced myself to in order to familiarize myself with it.Despite not being a pillar of traditional masculinity, Peter is remarkably self-assured. Where does that confidence come from?I believe it has a great deal to do with the environment he was raised in, which was very secluded and isolated, as well as his experience of trauma — he had to physically cut his own father down when he committed suicide. Because he was isolated, he didn’t have any expectations of others to live up to in terms of how he dealt with his traumas.When you were 16, you were diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a medical condition that causes vertebrae to fuse and results in chronic pain. Did you relate to Peter’s sense of being an outsider?Absolutely. I wasn’t as physically capable as other kids, and that brought me a lot of grief in my younger years before I learned how to deal with it. But I used the chronic pain and the emotions to fuel me further into my endeavor with curiosity. I found myself in libraries a lot; I would find heaps of books on things that transmuted apathy into a sense of control or freedom. But my knowledge didn’t help me become someone who wasn’t an outcast, it just made me grateful for being an outcast because of where it took me intellectually, spiritually and physically.Your vision was impaired in your left eye while shooting the film because of a severe cataract related to your condition — which means the scene where you catch a matchbox must have been pretty difficult.They just left the camera rolling, and it took me probably 20 times to catch the matchbox because I have no depth perspective — any time someone hands me something, I think it’s closer than it actually is. But I eventually did get it, and it was without giggling, so that’s good!Did you have discussions about your characters, or were you letting the dynamic play out as you went?We had a very, very deep discussion about our characters — there’s so much going on that’s internalized, so it was about talking about all these things that are ambiguous in many ways in the script and the book.Like what?Kirsten [Dunst, who plays Peter’s widowed mother, Rose] and I had this idea — it’s not in the book at all, and I have to be clear about that because it would change the whole story — that Peter had actually killed his dad, too. It was our little secret that would just create a weird bond between them that would translate, but the audience wouldn’t know how to put their finger on it. But apparently some people put their finger directly on it!What do you make of the ending?Peter completely killed [Phil] with the anthrax. And he didn’t necessarily plan it out from A to Z, he’s one who really just acts upon the moment.Is he attracted to Phil?I’m still not sure if Peter started to feel his own intimate and sensual feelings toward Phil, or if that was all just a means to his own ends, but it does create a deeper layer that Peter was exploring his sexuality and maybe discovered himself in Phil and had to sacrifice his love for him.Do you think Peter’s mother knows he killed Phil?I think Rose knows and doesn’t want to ask. The same goes for Jesse Plemons’s character — when he hears about anthrax, he knows Phil would never touch anything that has anthrax because he’s so well-learned in those areas. People don’t ask what they already know.“The Power of the Dog” wasn’t the only film you shot close to home during the pandemic — you also play the singer Jimmie Rodgers in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic, filmed in Australia and slated for release next summer. What was it like jumping from a western to the glitz of a Luhrmann film?My first day on the set, I was just supposed to be in the background of a scene, but then Baz Luhrmann said, “I have this great idea, I want you to stand on the table and sing.” And he gave me the option to say yes or no, but especially after working with Jane, I said yes. You’ve just got to not think about what others are going to think.What would be your dream role?I’m a big fan of surrealism, so it would be cool to play Salvador Dalí — I think I resemble him, in a way. More

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      How Joaquin Phoenix Handles Parenting in ‘C’mon C’mon’

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      The writer and director Mike Mills narrates a sequence from his film featuring Phoenix and Woody Norman.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A radio journalist becomes a de facto parent in “C’mon C’mon,” the latest feature from the writer-director Mike Mills.Joaquin Phoenix stars as Johnny, a single man who is tasked with caring for his nephew, Jesse (Woody Norman), while his sister deals with pressing family matters. The childless Johnny is plunged into handling some of the crises, large and small, that come with taking care of a boy. Like, in this scene, what to do when the kid has had too much sugar before bedtime and won’t go to sleep.Mills combines two moments in the sequence: how Johnny handles the moment that night juxtaposed with him recalling the moment in a self-recorded confessional. The sequence includes some topics Jesse brings up that throws Johnny for a loop, like mentioning he heard his mother got an abortion.In an interview, Mills said he wanted to peel back more layers to the relationship between these two as they got to know each other better. And he wanted to capture how to express deeper thoughts to a child.“This thing that often happens to me as a parent,” he said, is “you’re trying to share something intense and compelling with the kid. And you just feel like you’ve failed. You just feel like you did not do a good job of showing up or articulating something. And actually, this young little person has judo-flipped you in like three different ways and you’re just sort of knocked out by the end.”Read the “C’mon C’mon” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      At Long Last, Onscreen Portrayals of Lesbian Relationships Are Getting Complex

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      The shift comes after decades of stories that minimized romantic love between women as fruitless, or as some kind of phase.In most parts of the world, to be gay or transgender is to at some point realize that you’ve been taught, to varying degrees, to deny who you are and to feel shame about your desire to love and be loved — to be entitled to a full life. This is true, as well, of queer lives onscreen, where, until very recently, most narratives centered around death, whether it was the trans person too tragic to continue living — either as a result of murder (“Boys Don’t Cry,” 1999) or suicide, a trope that has existed since “Glen or Glenda” (1953), one of the earliest films to highlight transgender issues — or gay men felled by their own murderous impulses (“Cruising,” 1980) and, later on, complications from AIDS, representations of which have regularly treated the disease as a form of punishment.Then there were lesbian characters. They, too, were subjected to countless onscreen deaths, from Tara on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in 2002 to Poussey on “Orange Is the New Black” in 2016, but queer women have also been disappeared in a different way: For nearly a century, affection between two women has often been depicted as unrequited, predatory, transient or otherwise unserious. Just think of the menacing, lonely Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940), a famously queer-coded character; or, on a lighter note, Roseanne Barr and Mariel Hemingway on the former’s sitcom in 1994, or Calista Flockhart and Lucy Liu on “Ally McBeal” five years later. All these stories seemed to argue that the ultimate tragedy of lesbianism was that it was a choice, and that smart women, wanting marriage and children, chose otherwise. Such “lesbian kiss episodes,” as they’re derided today, were usually (and unsurprisingly) dreamed up by straight male Hollywood showrunners as a kind of titillation, according to Sarah Kate Ellis, 50, the chief executive officer of GLAAD, who says, “Lesbian storytelling has historically been told through the eyes of men and their experience of that, of their own desire.”Tara (Amber Benson), left, and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”© 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy of Everett CollectionNow, some two decades later, lesbian portrayals onscreen are finally starting to become deeper, more varied and more inclusive, moving beyond the aspirational (mostly rich, mostly white) women who dominated programs like Showtime’s “The L Word,” which debuted in 2004, or Todd Haynes’s 2015 film, “Carol,” based on “The Price of Salt,” Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel of mannered glances, and starring Cate Blanchett as a housewife who must choose between her female love and her daughter.In the past two years, there have been “The Wilds” (2020), Sarah Streicher’s Amazon Prime video series about a group of teenage girls that doesn’t overly conflate coming out with conflict, as well as indie films like Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (2019) and Miranda July’s “Kajillionaire” (2020), wherein love stories orbit around mutual desire rather than shared sexual frustration. In late 2019, when Showtime rebooted “The L Word,” the show was celebrated by fans for its more diverse cast — and more authentic writing, which didn’t shy away from the realities of menstruation, cunnilingus or seething jealousy. Gone was the tragic lesbian, forced to choose between love and a full life; instead, we got unpredictable, messy, complicated lesbian lives. “The ultimate privilege is being able to do anything we want,” says its 36-year-old showrunner, Marja-Lewis Ryan. “We’re getting closer to being able to have characters who are deeply [flawed] and not have them represent all of us.”The third season of “Master of None” focused on the marriage and relationship between Alicia (Naomi Ackie), left, and Denise (Lena Waithe).© Netflix/courtesy of Everett CollectionAnd what is the point of queer representation if not that? Not just that there’s less death and despair, or that there are happier endings, but that the misery and pathos of life is rendered with more complexity, because everyday life is sometimes miserable, too. “It’s so important to us to have characters [being] weird and crazy,” says the queer writer, producer and actor Lena Waithe, 37, when discussing the BBC thriller “Killing Eve,” soon to air its fourth season, which has thus far subverted the “will they, won’t they” clichés of the past — and, too, the murderous impulses — by layering each episode with chaotic, bizarre sexual tension.Waithe accomplished something similarly complex when, earlier this year, she co-wrote and starred in Season 3 of Netflix’s “Master of None,” a five-episode arc that centered on two women who are selfish, who step out on each other, who watch their dreams crumble but still manage to move forward. After their marriage eventually fractures, they bend, break and then start to heal themselves, offering a radical depiction of queerness that both references decades of downtrodden lesbian narratives and yet somehow still feels hopeful. Making the piece was, as Waithe says, a matter of “life and death,” as much for herself as for the other L.G.B.T.Q. creators it might someday inspire. “We spend our lives trying to fit into a world we don’t want to fit in,” she adds. “We don’t need to.” More

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      ‘C’mon C’mon’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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

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      ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ Review: Growing Pains

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      In this Disney animated feature from the best-selling series of books, the lead character fearfully enters middle school.The Wimpy-verse is expanding again thanks to the dutiful animated feature “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” The characters created by Jeff Kinney in his best-selling books here enter middle school, a potential minefield of embarrassments and threats to friendship. Incarnated in gently bulbous, digitally smooth form, our hero, Greg Heffley (voiced by Brady Noon), runs through a good-natured medley of misadventures over 56 episodic minutes.Greg enjoys the companionship of his cylindrical buddy, Rowley (Ethan William Childress), but is driven by an abject fear of ostracism. Together they weather the dread of putting a foot wrong under the unfamiliar rules of middle school, whether that means saying “play” when you mean “hang out” or touching a fetid piece of cheese in the playground (a cherished conceit in the series). But the truest worry that Kinney’s characters explore is how friends survive transitions, and clash (as they do over being the cartoonist for the school paper).Greg — a stick-figure with Jughead-esque askew smile and a Charlie Brown wisp of hair — can be weak-willed and secretly nasty, especially toward Rowley. But the movie’s tone remains wholesome, unless you count the teenage bullies. These uncool degenerates are prone to reckless driving and, oddly, listening to Judas Priest’s 1980 hit “Breaking the Law.” Greg’s teen sib is a pill, too, especially next to his sage mom, antsy dad and supercute moppet kid-brother.The movie, directed by Swinton O. Scott III, plays like an extended series pilot, built out of largely interchangeable episodes. But its vacuum-packed, impersonal animation does bear one benefit: no live child actors onscreen who can age out of their roles.Diary of a Wimpy KidRated PG. Running time: 56 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      Alec Baldwin Says He Is Not Responsible for Fatal Shooting on ‘Rust’

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      In an emotional interview with ABC News, the actor asserted, ‘Someone put a live bullet in a gun.’The actor Alec Baldwin fiercely insisted he was not to blame in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of a Western being filmed in New Mexico, claiming that another person had accidentally placed a live round in the gun that went off in his grasp as he was rehearsing a scene.“Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property,” Mr. Baldwin said in a television interview that was broadcast on Thursday night. “Someone is ​responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.”Mr. Baldwin made the comments in an emotional ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, the first time that Mr. Baldwin has publicly given an account of what happened in October. The actor’s description of the episode may cast greater scrutiny on crew members and suppliers and the question of who was responsible for safeguarding firearms in the low-budget production.In the interview, excerpts from which had been released on Wednesday, Mr. Baldwin also said that he did not pull the trigger of the gun he was practicing with on the set of “Rust” when it fired a live round.“I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them — never,” Mr. Baldwin said.The fatal shooting took place on Oct. 21 near Santa Fe, N.M., on a movie set designed to be a church. Mr. Baldwin was practicing drawing an old-fashioned revolver that he had been told contained no live rounds when it suddenly fired, killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, and wounding its director, Joel Souza, 48.The cinematographer who was killed, Halyna Hutchins, was mourned in October at a candlelight vigil in Burbank, Calif. Chris Pizzello/Associated PressMr. Baldwin said that he was stunned by what happened and that at least 45 minutes passed after the gun went off before he realized that it could have contained a live round..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“I stood over her for 60 seconds as she just laid there kind of in shock,” Mr. Baldwin said.The actor added that he did not cock the hammer of the gun, but pulled it back as far as he could and let it go in an action that might have set it off. “I let go of the hammer — bang, the gun goes off.”Investigators are seeking to determine how a live round got into the gun that Mr. Baldwin was practicing with, why the crew members who inspected it on set failed to notice, and why the gun fired.Mr. Baldwin’s contention that he had not pulled the trigger was supported by a lawyer for the film’s assistant director, Dave Halls, who had been standing near Mr. Baldwin inside the church set when the gun fired.The lawyer, Lisa Torraco, told the ABC News show “Good Morning America” on Thursday that Mr. Halls had told her that “the entire time Baldwin had his finger outside the trigger guard, parallel to the barrel.” She said Mr. Halls had told her that “since Day 1, he thought it was a misfire.”In the ABC interview, Mr. Baldwin also said he recalled that shortly before the shooting, Mr. Halls had told him, “This is a cold gun,” an industry term implying that firearm does not have live rounds and is safe to use.“When he’s saying, ‘This is a cold gun,’ what he’s saying to everybody on the set is, ‘You can relax,’” Mr. Baldwin said.Mr. Baldwin, who has come under intense criticism after the shooting, has already been questioned by detectives and is cooperating with the investigation. No one has been charged in connection with the shooting, and authorities have not placed blame on any individual.“I got countless people online saying, ‘You idiot, you never point a gun at someone,’” Mr. Baldwin said. “Well, unless you’re told it’s empty and it’s the director of photography who’s instructing you on the angle for a shot we’re going to do.”Some gun experts said it was possible that the gun, a single-action revolver, could have discharged without Mr. Baldwin’s pulling the trigger if he had pulled back the revolver’s hammer and released it before it was fully cocked. But they questioned whether that would have created enough force to fire the live round.Clay Van Sickle, a movie industry armorer who did not work on “Rust,” said guns generally go off only when someone pulls the trigger. “Unless that gun was in a horrible state of disrepair,” he said, “there is no other way that gun could have gone off.”As detectives work to trace the source of the live round, one focus has been on Seth Kenney, who supplied blanks and dummy rounds for the production.According to court documents filed on Tuesday, detectives are trying to determine whether Mr. Kenney sent live ammunition as well as blanks and dummies, and they have searched his business in Albuquerque, PDQ Arm & Prop.Mr. Kenney said in an interview that he was confident he was not the source of any live round.“It is not a possibility that they came from PDQ or from myself personally,” he told “Good Morning America.”Thell Reed, a weapons expert who has worked and consulted on a number of films, has told detectives that he supplied live rounds to Mr. Kenney for training on another film, according to court documents. Mr. Reed, who is the father of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the “Rust” armorer, suggested they might match live rounds found on “Rust.”The film’s prop master, Sarah Zachry, has told investigators, according to the court documents, that the ammunition on the set had come from “various sources” — from Mr. Kenney, but also from Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who was said to have brought some from a previous production, and from a person identified only as “Billy Ray.”Since the fatal shooting, two crew members who were in the room when the gun went off have filed separate lawsuits, naming Mr. Baldwin, the film’s producers and other crew members including Mr. Halls and Ms. Gutierrez-Reed as defendants.Both lawsuits say Mr. Baldwin should have checked the gun himself to see whether it was safe to handle. In the interview, Mr. Baldwin said that on the day of the shooting, one of the plaintiffs touched his shoulder and said he bore no responsibility for what happened.Mr. Baldwin declined to say which plaintiff it was. Serge Svetnoy, one of the crew members who filed suit, told ABC that he did say that to Mr. Baldwin but later changed his mind.The actor insisted that the tragedy occurred after he was handed the gun and was told it was safe, and that Ms. Hutchins herself had told him how to position it. Both he and Ms. Hutchins assumed the gun was safe to handle, he said.“I am holding the gun where she told me to hold it,” Mr. Baldwin said. “I can’t imagine I’d ever do a movie that had a gun in it again.”Matt Stevens More

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      Three Great Documentaries to Stream

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      A look at standout nonfiction films, from classics to overlooked recent works, that will reward your time.The proliferation of documentaries on streaming services makes it difficult to choose what to watch. Each month, we’ll choose three nonfiction films — classics, overlooked recent docs and more — that will reward your time.‘Hospital’ (1970)Stream it on Kanopy.A scene from the Frederick Wiseman documentary ”Hospital.”Zipporah Films, Inc.From his debut film, “Titicut Follies,” shot at the state prison for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, Mass., to last year’s “City Hall,” filmed in Boston, the great documentarian Frederick Wiseman has created a body of work — “the films,” he always calls them — that doubles as a library of institutions, primarily but not exclusively American. It’s striking to consider how consistent his unobtrusive style has remained through more than five decades, and how much of it was in place early in his career. His fourth feature, “Hospital,” filmed in 1969 at Metropolitan Hospital in New York, had a degree of access that privacy rules would likely make difficult today.It is also the best Wiseman in miniature, because hospitals touch on so many of the subjects he would return to: the treatment of juveniles. The welfare system. Poverty. Abuse. Wiseman wasn’t even done with medicine: Two decades later in “Near Death,” his longest film and a plausible candidate for his greatest, Wiseman spent time in an intensive care unit at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, watching patients at the ends of their lives and doctors arguing over difficult calls.If “Near Death” showcases humanity at its most fragile, “Hospital” finds mainly compassionate doctors dealing, by proxy, with the tumult and chaos of the city itself. A patient has arrived after a transfer that a doctor says put her life in jeopardy. A man shows up with a bloody neck wound that turns out to be all right, but came close to hitting a major blood vessel. In a scene striking for the period, a psychiatrist supports a patient in accepting his homosexuality, not trying to change it. A daughter tells her mother, who’s in critical condition, not to worry, a few minutes after Wiseman has shown a priest with unkempt hair hovering nearby.But in case “Hospital” sounds hopelessly grim, it also contains one of Wiseman’s funniest sequences. A hippie who has taken what he fears was bad mescaline tells anyone who will listen (including an unflappable physician) that he doesn’t want to die. After some ipecac and a round of vomiting that would be right at home in a Mel Brooks comedy, he’s fine.‘The Task’ (2017)Streaming for free off the artist’s website.A scene from the documentary “The Task.”Leigh LedareWhat is the task? It’s never quite clear in the conceptual artist Leigh Ledare’s riveting hybrid of documentary and psychology experiment, filmed over three days at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2017. Set entirely in one room, the movie observes something known as a “group relations conference,” a gathering that brings strangers together to explore the dynamics that form. (To the uninitiated, it looks more like group therapy than a business meeting.) The participants come from a range of ages, races and socioeconomic backgrounds. Interspersed among them are a handful of “consultants” — psychologists indistinguishable from the regular group members by sight, although their role in steering and potentially dominating the discussion will be examined and re-examined before the film’s end.Exactly what the discussion is supposed to be about is up for debate: The closest the “task” gets to a definition is that the subjects are supposed to examine their behavior in the “here and now.” (Occasionally, even the participants profess to be confused about what they’re talking about; part of the fun is to watch reactions and facial language, and when people interrupt.) The conversations turn on ideas about vulnerability, victimhood, stereotyping and even whether people are playing power games by where they choose to sit. The presence of the cameras — and Ledare himself — complicates matters. The participants debate whether they would behave the same way if they weren’t conscious of being recorded. At times the chatter gets heated. When a man reveals himself as a Trump voter, a woman shuts him down and requests that politics stay off the table.“If this is as good as it gets, then how did we get to where we are as a species?” a man asks at one point, getting laughs. But the subject of “The Task” is deadly serious. It seems to capture nothing less than the process of people learning to trust one another — and not quite succeeding.‘Jawline’ (2019)Stream it on Hulu.Anyone concerned that social media is becoming a substitute for real life will find no solace in Liza Mandelup’s surreal and often funny documentary, which takes viewers inside the world of live-broadcasting influencers. (Those are different from Instagram influencers. Keep up!) With dreams of fame, Austyn Tester, a Bieber-coiffed teenager in Eastern Tennessee, holds regular video-chats in which he lip-syncs to songs and offers compliments to his fan base of adolescent girls, who seem elated at even the slightest hint of attention. Occasionally, these interactions happen in person, as when Austyn announces that he’ll host a meet-and-greet at a food court on a Thursday afternoon. One girl tells him she drove two hours for the occasion. He is a salve for his followers’ insecurities: an all-purpose friend, boyfriend, parent and mental-health counselor whom they don’t even need the luxury of knowing in real life. Nor, at 16, does he apparently need much life experience to substitute for those things.For his part, Austyn appears sincere about his desire to brighten people’s days — an earnestness that Mandelup juxtaposes against the grim environment around him, including a home overrun with cats. Austyn’s mother says his father had substance-abuse issues and beat them, but Austyn believes he’s good at faking happiness until he makes it. (When it looks like he won’t, his problems begin.)To show the milieu that Austyn hopes to join, Mandelup tags along in Los Angeles with Michael Weist, a manager for teenagers in Austyn’s line of work. He describes mentoring new influencers as a sort of time-bound gold rush. (This particular brand of celebrity tends to be evanescent.) He also barely looks older than his clients. But Michael doesn’t think Austyn’s “like” numbers are where they ought to be. “I wouldn’t touch him,” he says. More

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      ‘Try Harder!’ Review: California Overachievement Test

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      This documentary from Debbie Lum goes inside a top-performing San Francisco public high school to see how students are preparing for the future.The coming-of-age documentary “Try Harder!” from the director Debbie Lum (“Seeking Asian Female”) immerses us in the world of elite college admissions at one of San Francisco’s top-performing public high schools: Lowell High. Equal parts vérité character study and probing meditation on the virtues of success, the film follows a group of five delightfully earnest overachievers who have internalized, to a stunning degree, the necessity of getting into Stanford and Harvard and other top-tier colleges. Watching these bright, motivated young people apply for and be admitted to (and rejected from) the Ivy League has all the energy of a high-stakes poker game and a reality competition show combined.The film mostly takes place inside the school, yet its inventive and unexpected visuals manage to avoid classroom banality. When the camera zooms in on the science posters on the walls around the student (and aspiring brain surgeon) Alvan Cai, as he gushes about Lowell’s beloved physics teacher Mr. Shapiro, the close-up transforms these dog-eared microscopic images of biology into sharp abstract paintings. Lum and the cinematographers Lou Nakasako and Kathy Huang skillfully harness the depth of field of their images to routinely point us toward a wider view that the Lowell students often lack.As Lowell has a majority Asian American student population, the film briefly takes up the complex well of anti-affirmative action sentiment among some Asian Americans, but its attempts to use Lowell teachers as talking heads on this topic feel stunted and confusing. (Here Peter Nick’s film “Homeroom” pairs nicely as another Bay Area-set doc that examines youth politics to greater satisfaction.)However, Lum smartly interrogates the “tiger mom” archetype by presenting more than one kind of Asian mother, and focuses on the experience of a biracial student (Rachael Schmidt) to debunk the myth that Black students only get into Ivies to meet quotas. Quiet yet assertive, “Try Harder!” itself succeeds at not trying too hard.Try Harder!Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters. More