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    How Do You Make Teen Comedies Today? Buy a High School.

    LIVERPOOL, N.Y. — The teenage couple is lounging on the lawn outside a high school, taking advantage of a free period between classes in that age-old way: making out on the quad. A friend runs over, clearly agitated by a drama unfolding elsewhere, and asks for help. The duo reluctantly gets up and follows, dragging their backpacks behind them.Then there’s another interruption to their moment. The director, Sammi Cohen, yells cut. An actor, Tyler Alvarez, asks for another take. “One more, real quick,” he says.This is an early fall day, back to school at American High. The school has not had actual students in the halls for years, but it is once again home to high school drama of the sort generally captured in R-rated teenage comedies.Sitting inconspicuously in the far corner of that grassy area is Jeremy Garelick, 46, a writer/director/producer and the maestro of the American High experiment. Wearing an American High baseball cap, red-tinted sunglasses and a pair of headphones slung around his neck, he watched the scenes on an enormous iPad for this latest American High production, an untitled lesbian love story about an aspiring young artist who’s forced to join her high school track team.He nodded along with the action and laughed as the jokes landed. (“If you go down, I’m going down with you … like the Titanic,” generated a particular chuckle.)Jeremy Garelick, right, with his producing partner Will Phelps, on the school bus they purchased after Mr. Garelick bought the school for $1 million several years ago.Libby March for The New York TimesMr. Garelick, best known as the director of “The Wedding Ringer” and the screenwriter of “The Break Up,” is betting that the time is right now for a surge in hormonal high jinks captured on film: teen stories for the sensibilities of the Gen Z streaming generation. After all, it has been roughly two decades since tales of love, sex and related high school humiliations had created financial and cultural hits like “American Pie” and “Can’t Hardly Wait,” films that themselves were grabbing the baton from 1980s John Hughes classics.Studios, focused on special effects-laden blockbusters that make going to the movie theater into an event, don’t share his conviction. They now shy away from this kind of mid-budget-range film because of the marketing costs needed to help turn it into a box office success — and the risky proposition of selling something to the fickle teen audience. Back in 2007, the comedy “Superbad,” starring then-relative unknowns Jonah Hill and Michael Cera, became a significant hit, earning $170 million in worldwide grosses. Yet fast forward a decade to the female version of that gross-out comedy, the Olivia Wilde-directed “Booksmart,” which was beloved by critics and also featured an up-and-coming cast, but only earned $25 million in box office receipts. It all looks a bit too perilous for the big studios.Chris Weitz, the co-director of “American Pie” and one of the producers of Ms. Cohen’s film, attributes the shift to technology that puts audiences in control.“It was one thing when the gatekeepers, usually old fogies, controlled what kind of content was going to be put out about teens,” he said. “Now teens can get all kinds of content about themselves made by themselves, which gives them a greater sense of truth to them than something that any feature film producer would cook up.”With that landscape in mind, Mr. Garelick decided to make the films really inexpensively on his own. If done correctly, they could easily be funneled onto streaming platforms, which are constantly on the hunt for new material, especially content that attracts the ever elusive teen audience.He figured out if he shot two movies back-to-back in one location he could save one-third of his production costs. If he shot three, he could save half. He could be like the now begone film studio New Line, applying the “Lord of the Rings’” cost-savings method to the world of teen comedy. Peter Jackson relied on the verdant landscape of New Zealand for his Hobbit-driven epic.Mr. Garelick would have an abandoned school.“That’s when I had my ‘aha moment’” he said. “This is how I’m going to make my high school movies. Nobody out there is making them. Now is the time to get into it.”In today’s complex content ecosystem, studios are spending more and more to lure general audiences to theaters with blockbuster franchise films while the streamers are primarily trying to keep their fragmented audiences glued to their services by offering niche content. Teen comedies might not have enough consistent commercial potential for the studios, but Mr. Garelick thought that if he could offer a consistent flow of films, surely a streaming service would bite. And if he were to find a location where he could take advantage of the tax incentives given by local governments, his dollars would go further and he could benefit from the support of the local community.First, he needed a school, something brick and stately, at once lived-in but also easily adaptable for any high school scene. He thought of the basic settings in almost every teen comedy: a school gymnasium, a cafeteria, classrooms, hallways, an auditorium.It also had to be located in a state offering significant tax incentives. After some Google searching, Mr. Garelick and his then assistant and now producing partner, Will Phelps, 30, flew to Syracuse and drove to Liverpool, where Mr. Garelick saw the 89-year old A.V. Zogg School, a regal-looking institution that occupies an entire block in a tree-lined neighborhood. Over the years, it has functioned as both a middle school and a high school, a community church and had been most recently owned by a Thai businessman.For $1 million in 2017, it was Mr. Garelick’s.Mr. Garelick with the actress Teala Dunn. Before beginning production, Mr. Garelick held town halls where residents could ask questions and voice concerns.Libby March for The New York TimesSelling American HighTo sell his idea to investors, Mr. Garelick made a sizzle reel of his favorite high school films (“American Pie,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) — to show that every high school movie has the same basic locations — and took his pitch to the studios, independent financiers, anyone really who was willing to listen to his proposal. He was going to make three movies that looked as if they cost $30 million each but would only cost $8 million. The producer Mickey Liddell and his LD Entertainment bit, and American High was in business.He also had to sell it to his new neighbors. Early on, Mr. Garelick discovered the area wasn’t zoned for filming and the only way he was going to get the city’s approval was if he offered a trade school in addition to a production office. He also had to get buy-in from the community, so he and Mr. Phelps held town hall meetings where residents could voice any and all concerns: Would there be a lot of noise? What about the lights? One man was worried that the production would snap up all the barbers and he wouldn’t have a place to get his hair cut. After sifting through a year of red tape, American High was a go.“Plan B,” with Kuhoo Verma, right, and Victoria Moroles, was an early success for American High.HuluThe first two movies were small. “Holly Slept Over” cost only $500,000 while “Banana Split” was done for $1.2 million.Then American High produced “Big Time Adolescence” with Pete Davidson and Jon Cryer. The raunchy comedy made it into Sundance in 2019 and was sold to Hulu, the start of a partnership with the streaming service. The companies now have an eight-picture licensing deal. The latest film being directed by Ms. Cohen marks American High’s fifth production for Hulu. Others include “Plan B,” which debuted this year to strong reviews; “The Binge,” which Mr. Garelick directed; “The Ultimate Playlist of Noise”; and “Sex Appeal,” which has yet to come out. (A sequel to “The Binge” is set to begin production in January. “It’s our first franchise,” Mr. Garelick joked.)Mr. Garelick’s belief in the potential of this particular slice of American movies is based on his study of the Strauss-Howe generational theory — the notion that distinct groups throughout history share characteristics and values that cycle anew every 18 to 20 years. But audiences are more fragmented today than they were when “American Pie” came out and caught the cultural zeitgeist. And major studios long ago abandoned genre films for the surer bets of big blockbuster action titles.“At Hulu, we know that audiences still really want those genres, so something like a young adult title or a romantic comedy — that is something the audiences are still really clamoring for,” Brian Henderson, Hulu’s senior vice president of content programming and partnerships, said in an interview. “That’s a perfect place for Hulu to step in and bring those kinds of films to streaming audiences.”The new class“How many American High productions have you worked on?” Mr. Garelick asks every crew member he runs into while showing guests around the American High campus. “Nine,” said the costumer Celine Rahman. “Seven,” the location manager Emily Campbell said. In between working on the scripts and putting the films together, Mr. Garelick takes a lot of pride in having transformed his ragtag crew of recent college graduates into a professional operation that can handle bigger budgets and more complex shoots.Some actors have appeared in multiple films, like Mr. Alvarez, 23. “They make it so much fun, and I think that’s when you get the best work,” said Mr. Alvarez, whose previous production, “Sid is Dead,” about a social outcast who gets the class bully suspended has yet to debut. He mentioned the traditional end-of-production parties, which include a ritual where people attempt to throw a fire extinguisher through a wall. Not all the actors were as enthusiastic.“Love the people. Love the script. Hate the location,” quipped the YouTube content creator and actress Teala Dunn. “Terrible food. Terrible bugs.”This all gives the American High set the feel of a well-run summer camp more than a high-stress production environment. Part of that is the slew of young people traipsing around, part is the environment that Mr. Garelick and Mr. Phelps have cultivated where the majority of the work is done before shooting begins. Once the cameras roll, they let the directors do their job.Several of the movies have provided crucial experience for people like the first-time feature director Sammi Cohen.Libby March for The New York Times“There is a reason why Sam was given $7 million to make a movie,” Mr. Garelick said of Ms. Cohen, a veteran television director who is making her feature directorial debut with the current production, which is still untitled. “The biggest challenge for us is getting the script and the movie to a point where it’s awesome enough for somebody to say, ‘Here’s a lot of money to go make it.’ Once everything is put together, it’s really the director’s choice to do what she wants to do, especially on a movie like this. I don’t want to have a lot of input.”Natalie Morales confirms Mr. Garelick’s approach. The actress best known for her role as Lucy Santo Domingo in TV’s “Parks and Recreation” directed “Plan B” in 2020 after enduring six months of delays because of Covid. What she found surprised her, especially since, she said, Mr. Garelick and Mr. Phelps can initially come off more as “fun-loving bros” than serious businessmen.“Jeremy and Will were so trusting of me and so willing to support me,” she said in a recent interview. “That’s not the experience you typically get with men who consider themselves more experienced than you.”“Plan B” stars Kuhoo Verma and Victoria Moroles as two teenagers who must cross the state lines of South Dakota to find a Plan B pill after a regrettable sexual encounter. And it represents the epitome of the American High ethos: the high school experience told from a different point of view. In this case, it involves a strait-laced Indian girl who’s always expected to do the right thing, and her friend Lupe, a wild child whose sexuality may not align with her family’s expectations. Hulu said that “Plan B” was a hit not just with younger audiences, but with older women as well.High school movies rarely deviate from a specific formula. Most chronicle the agony and ecstasy of adolescence: falling in love, tasting your first sip of alcohol, realizing your parents aren’t perfect, discovering what kind of music you love. Those themes play out in American High’s movies, too, but through a new lens.“We all grew up loving John Hughes movies,” Mr. Garelick said. “And we loved them because they’re universal high school stories but when we look back at them, they’re all about a white guy who wants to get laid by the prom queen and winds up with their best friend, or something like that. And the people of color or people from different backgrounds were either in the background or were the butt of the joke. In our movies, they are our leads, and they’re often the ones who wrote these stories.”Of the 11 American High movies that have been shot at the school since 2017, seven have been made by first-time filmmakers, three of them women.“They could have done the thing where they buy the school and they set this all up for themselves,” Ms. Morales said. “That’s not what they’re doing.”A different kind of film schoolThe Syracuse film commission estimates that each film shot at American High leaves 70 percent of its budget in the region, between the local crew members it hires to the money spent in restaurants and hotels.Libby March for The New York TimesBefore American High’s arrival, the Syracuse film commission struggled to attract productions to the area, despite offering sizable tax credits. The inclement weather and meager crew base were major obstacles.Since Mr. Garelick entered the picture, things have changed.“It was a total 180,” the Syracuse film commissioner Eric Vinal said. “We went from very much a gig economy with people working pretty sporadically in the industry to really having full-time, secure positions.”Mr. Vinal estimates that each film shot leaves 70 percent of its budget in the region, between the local crew members it hires to the money spent in restaurants and hotels. American High’s movies initially cost $1 million to $2 million and have now expanded to the $7 million to $9 million range, with roughly 70 crew members, and going from nonunion crews to almost all union employees.Pulling from local colleges like Syracuse University, Onondaga Community College, Ithaca College and Le Moyne College, American High and Syracuse Studios, the company’s production services operation, employs 10 students on each production — students who might otherwise have to move to Los Angeles or New York for film jobs.Costumes for Ms. Cohen’s new movie.Libby March for The New York TimesA scene from Ms. Cohen’s as-yet untitled film.Libby March for The New York Times“It was a fantastic idea for the kind of thing that we’re doing here, which is educating storytellers of the future,” said Michael Schoonmaker, the chairman of the television, radio and film department at Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. “One of our advantages here in the frozen tundra of the snow capital city of the world, is that, you know, we’ve got them captive but also we’re pretty far away from everything. Jeremy’s program connects the two.”Will Sacca, 24, first met Mr. Garelick in the spring of 2017 when the director came to his intro to screenwriting class and pitched American High directly to the students. Mr. Sacca became one of the first summer interns and was charged with reading and analyzing comedy scripts for what could be American High’s first features. After graduation, Mr. Sacca returned to American High and worked in a variety of different departments: locations, production, accounting. He then became Mr. Garelick’s assistant before moving back into development, where now, as the head of the department, he manages a team of readers, including college interns who provide initial reaction to scripts.“I’m really fortunate,” Mr. Sacca said. “If I was at any of the mini-majors in L.A. or one of the big studios, I would be, at best, an executive assistant.”Ms. Rahman’s trajectory was similar. A recent graduate, she was living in New York City trying her hand at acting when she made a decision to return home to Syracuse. First she got a job as a background actor on American High’s second feature, “Banana Split.” That resulted in a move into the costume department, where she’s been ever since.“We’ve got Syracuse University and this really great film school there and you would think that this kind of thing would have been done a long time ago,” she said. “It seems that people are just kind of realizing, ‘Oh wait, there’s a place to make movies here and it’s sustainable.’”‘The Rah-Rah of it all’A classroom at American High. The company employs 10 students on each production, pulling from local colleges like Syracuse University.Libby March for The New York TimesNear the end of a long day of filming, Mr. Garelick sat in American High’s gym, watching a scene unfold and ruminating on his own high school experience. Not surprising, he loved it. Growing up in New City, N.Y., he was a football player, a member of the school’s theater troupe and president of the class. “I loved the Rah-Rah of it all,” he said.Now he gets to relive that feeling every day.American High has the bandwidth to shoot five films a year. Mr. Garelick and Mr. Phelps have also trained enough crew members that they can hand the reins of a production to others and get to work on the next American High film or other projects they’re involved with. (Mr. Garelick recently decamped to Hawaii to begin preproduction on the sequel to the Netflix film “Murder Mystery.”)What weighs on Mr. Garelick now is just how big of a beast he’s created. “We both feel responsible for a lot of people, and it’s definitely a lot of pressure,” he said. “But it’s also incredibly rewarding.” He acknowledged that things have become easier in the last year as more production has come to the area and his crew members have become experienced enough to get jobs on non-American High projects.Mr. Garelick with Mr. Phelps have trained enough crew members that they can hand the reins of a production to others.Libby March for The New York TimesIt also helps that immersing themselves in the world of R-rated teen comedies has made them experts.“We’ve gotten really good at knowing all the talent in this age range and in this space,” Mr. Phelps said. “We know all the scripts that are floating around because we’ve probably read them all.” More

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    ‘Red Notice’ | Anatomy of a Scene

    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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    Watch Dwayne Johnson Chase Ryan Reynolds in ‘Red Notice’

    The director Rawson Marshall Thurber narrates a sequence set in a museum.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 chase scene through a museum allowed the filmmakers behind “Red Notice” to try out some fun new technology.This sequence involves the F.B.I. profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) getting into a foot chase with the art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds). The chase involves some creative use of scaffolding and some inventive reuse of locations.In this video, the writer and director Rawson Marshall Thurber discusses how he and his crew worked through some of the limitations involved in shooting the film during the pandemic. They couldn’t leave Atlanta, their home base for the production, and had to build a museum set on a soundstage there.“Ryan and Dwayne chase each other through hallways, and oftentimes, what we would do is have them run through one hallway,” Thurber said, “and then overnight we would change it to look like a different hallway and they would run back the other way.”The filmmakers also employed a small camera called the Komodo, from Red Digital. That camera was attached to a race drone, which could chase the actors through the sets.“It got us some pretty great shots,” Thurber said.Read the “Red Notice” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    Bob Bondurant, Car Racer Who Tutored Actors on the Track, Dies at 88

    After a racetrack accident put him in the hospital, he pivoted to open a driving school, where his students included Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and Christian Bale.Bob Bondurant, a master racecar driver who was better known for his driving school in California and later Arizona, where he tutored actors like Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and Christian Bale for their onscreen racing roles, died on Nov. 12 in Paradise Valley, Ariz. He was 88. A death certificate provided by his wife, Pat Bondurant, said he had a “suspected immune reaction related to vaccinations.” It cited cerebrovascular disease and cerebral arterial stenosis as underlying conditions. He died at an assisted living facility.Mr. Bondurant began attracting attention in the racing world in 1959, when he won 18 of the 20 races he entered behind the wheel of a Corvette.“I am an original California hot rodder turned white hot when I started winning everything in my Corvettes,” he was quoted as saying by the National Corvette Museum, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2016.He continued to win races regularly in Corvettes in the 1960s, but he also began to race successfully in other sports cars and open-wheeled Formula 1 machines, including for the elite Ferrari team from 1965 to ’66.“He was top of the line,” said Peter Brock, who designed the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe that Mr. Bondurant raced with Dan Gurney to first place in the GT, or Grand Touring, class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race in 1964.But in 1967, Mr. Bondurant crashed during a race at what is now the Watkins Glen International in upstate New York, suffering multiple injuries, including fractures of both feet and a broken right ankle. It was a turning point.In the hospital he came up with the idea of opening a school that would teach safe, defensive driving to auto enthusiasts.The Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving opened in early 1968 at the Orange County International Raceway in Irvine, Calif. “We want to make a better driver, rather than make a faster driver,” he told The Los Angeles Times at the time. He also offered instruction in racecar driving, motorcycling and drag racing.Even before opening the school, Mr. Bondurant had some well-known students. He had coached James Garner and Yves Montand in driving Formula 1 cars for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film, “Grand Prix.” Mr. Bondurant, who was a stunt man and technical adviser to the film, wore 16-millimeter cameras on the sides of his helmet to record racing action on the track while moving at 150 miles per hour.Mr. Bondurant, in the car, with Paul Newman on the set of the 1969 movie “Winning.” Mr. Newman was one of his first big-name students.Universal, via Everett CollectionSoon after Mr. Bondurant opened the school, Mr. Newman and Robert Wagner signed up as students. They had been cast as racecar drivers in the film “Winning” (1969), in which Mr. Newman’s character dreams of winning the Indianapolis 500.“Paul has a knack of knowing how to learn,” Mr. Bondurant told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1988. “He’s like most actors — they know how to listen. He would move at his own pace, and wouldn’t go too quick. He took it step by step, and it came naturally to him.”He tested Mr. Newman on three tracks before he handed him off to another instructor, who familiarized him with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Mr. Newman’s experience on the film led him to take up racecar driving as a sideline, as a both successful professional driver and a team owner.As Mr. Bondurant’s school grew, it moved from Irvine to Ontario Speedway, near Los Angeles, then to Sonoma Raceway, in Northern California, and in 1989 to its most recent location, Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, in Chandler, Ariz.“I love teaching and I love driving,” he told The Post-Dispatch. “I hope I never grow up. It would be a disaster.”Robert Lewis Bondurant was born on April 27, 1933, in Chicago to John and Ruth (Williams) Bondurant. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a luxury car dealer who sold his business during the Depression and moved the family from Evanston, Ill., to the Westwood Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, making his living selling surgical instruments.His parents divorced when Bob was 12; four years later his mother died.“My dad took me to Gilmore Stadium when I was 7 to watch the races, and that got me interested in racing,” Mr. Bondurant told Motor Trend magazine in 2012.He drag-raced, began racing motorcycles at 18, moved on to sports cars — a British Morgan Plus 4, a Triumph TR2 — then drove a 1957 fuel-injected Corvette in his stunningly successful 1959 season, which earned him the title of Best Corvette Driver of the year. He kept winning in Corvettes into 1963.After studying business, he graduated from Woodbury College in Los Angeles in the early 1960s.Driving for the Shelby American team, Mr. Bondurant raced Cobras in the United States and Europe; in addition to the Le Mans triumph in 1964, he helped Shelby and Ford win the prestigious World Manufacturers’ GT Championships the next year.After his interlude with Ferrari, Mr. Bondurant leaped to the Canadian-American Challenge Cup circuit — better known as Can-Am — in cars that went even faster than those in Formula 1. His 1967 accident came at the Can-Am race at Watkins Glen. He was driving his McLaren Mark II at 150 m.p.h. when his steering arm broke, causing the car to flip multiple times.After recovering, he continued to race occasionally, the last time in 2012. But his focus was on his school, which his wife said had taught more than 500,000 people over 50 years, including professional racecar drivers, celebrities, military officers, F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents, Navy Seals, and teenagers learning safe-driving skills, usually at the request of their parents.In recent years, after Mr. Bondurant became less involved in it, the school was beset by financial problems and filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2018. An investment group purchased its assets the next year and renamed it the Radford Racing School. Ms. Bondurant said she was working to start another school that would use the Bondurant name.Mr. Bondurant in 2016 behind the wheel of an Alfa Romeo Giulia.“I love teaching and I love driving,” he said. “I hope I never grow up.”Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images Mr. Bondurant married Pat Chase at the Monaco Grand Prix racetrack in 2010. In addition to his wife, he is survived by her son, Jason Bondurant, whom he adopted and was a vice president of the racing school; his stepdaughter, Meagan Radigan; and two step-grandsons. His previous marriages ended in divorce.In 1990, Mr. Bondurant trained Tom Cruise for his role as a stock-car driver in Tony Scott’s “Days of Thunder,” and in 2000 Nicolas Cage trained at the Bondurant school for his role as a car thief in “Gone in 60 Seconds.”Mr. Bondurant worked with Christian Bale in the summer of 2018 as the actor trained to play the British racecar driver Ken Miles in “Ford v Ferrari” (2019), James Mangold’s account of the cutthroat competition in Formula 1 between the two automakers at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.“Bob spent hours with Christian in his GT40, talking to him about how to play Miles,” Ms. Bondurant said in a phone interview. “Bob had great reverence for Christian because both were motorcycle racers. With Christian’s motorcycle racing experience, Bob said: ‘I’d do anything to get him to quit acting. I could get him to win Le Mans.’” More

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    The company that produced ‘Parasite’ has bought Endeavor’s scripted content arm.

    The South Korean media conglomerate whose entertainment arm produced the winner of the 2019 Oscar for best picture, “Parasite,” has acquired a majority stake in the scripted arm of Endeavor Content, a subsidiary of the entertainment company Endeavor Group.Upon closure of the $775 million deal, which was announced late Thursday night, the South Korean conglomerate, CJ ENM, will own 80 percent of the business and the Endeavor Group 20 percent. The companies said they expected the deal to close in the first quarter of 2022.The Wall Street Journal reported the news earlier.“At the end of the day, CJ ENM strives to become a major global studio that encompasses content that appeals to a global audience — like this deal with Endeavor Content, we will continue to expand our presence in the global market,” Kang Ho-Sung, the conglomerate’s chief executive, said in a statement.Endeavor is being forced to reduce its ownership stake in its scripted content business as a result of a settlement this year with the Writers Guild of America, whose writers went on strike to protest what they saw as a conflict of interest at agencies that owned both talent representation businesses and production companies.Endeavor is not required to sell its unscripted assets and will maintain 100 percent ownership of that business.Endeavor Content was formed in 2017 by Graham Taylor and Chris Rice. Today, it calls itself a global film and television studio, and it has produced such projects as “Nine Perfect Strangers,” a Hulu mini-series starring Nicole Kidman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, “The Lost Daughter.” It owns a minority stake in Bruna Papandrea’s production company, Made Up Stories, in addition to PictureStart and Media Res.Mr. Taylor and Mr. Rice will remain co-chief executives of the new company.CJ has been expanding its foothold in Hollywood in recent years. Miky Lee, the vice chair of CJ Entertainment, the Hollywood arm of CJ ENM, rose to the national stage when she accepted the best picture Oscar for “Parasite,” but she was an industry player before then, nudging CJ toward Hollywood in the 1990s with a stake in DreamWorks. Most recently, she invested $100 million in David Ellison’s Skydance Media and was elected vice chair of the board of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.“Having known Miky Lee for more than 25 years, I’m confident that CJ ENM will be excellent stewards of the studio, accelerating and amplifying its projects on a global stage,” Ari Emanuel, the chief executive of Endeavor, said in a statement. More

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    The Real Surprise of ‘Passing’: A Focus on Black Women’s Inner Lives

    By making the lesbian attraction between the main characters more explicit, the drama moves beyond mainstream Hollywood’s white gaze.Midway through the new drama “Passing,” Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson), the light-brown-skinned, upper-middle-class protagonist, offers a unique insight into her psyche when she says to her friend Hugh, “We’re, all of us, passing for something or the other,” and adds, “Aren’t we?”Until now, Irene has successfully maintained her cover as both a respectable wife and proud African American woman. But when Hugh (Bill Camp) challenges her by asking why she does not pass for white like her biracial childhood friend, Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga), her response is a revelation, startling me almost as much as it did him.“Who’s to say I am not?” she snaps back.In that moment, I realized that what I had considered the B-plot of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, “Passing,” had risen to the surface in the writer-director Rebecca Hall’s adaptation, giving us a narrative that remains all too rare in Hollywood today: the interior world of a Black woman’s mind.When I teach Larsen’s novel to my undergraduate students, I usually start with the obvious: its racial plot and the ways in which Clare finds refuge from racism by identifying as white, only to be tragically alienated from her Black family and community.But I mainly teach “Passing” through what I think is the novel’s real central conflict: same-sex female desire and the paranoia that begins to overtake Irene, and for that matter Larsen’s story line, as a result of her unconsummated relationship with Clare. In a 1986 essay on Larsen’s novel, the critic Deborah E. McDowell explained why this longing had to appear secondary to the emphasis on race. “The idea of bringing a sexual attraction between two women to full expression,” she wrote, was “too dangerous of a move” in 1929. Instead, “Larsen enveloped the subplot of Irene’s developing if unnamed and unacknowledged desire for Clare in the safe and familiar plot of racial passing.”Rather than explore the ways that Irene comes into her sexuality, racial passing — at the height of segregation in America — was considered a far more urgent and thus more conventional theme than that of Black women’s inner lives. As a consequence, Larsen’s novel ended up passing, too, eventually taking “the form of the act it implies,” McDowell concluded.Visually, Hall compensates for the novel’s restraint through stolen glances, flirtatious phrases, and lingering touches and kisses between Clare and Irene. As Irene’s tension mounts, the film externalizes it through other symbols: a loudly ticking grandfather clock, a pot of water boiling over and even her breaking a teapot at a midday social in her home. In these hints, we see both Irene’s desire to break free from the illusion of middle-class domesticity and heterosexuality that she performs, as well as the threat that Clare’s presence poses to Irene’s sense of control.But, to externalize Irene’s internal thoughts and her sublimated identity, the movie makes what is suggested in the novel far more explicit. For example, Irene’s confession to Hugh never actually happens in the book. Hall opted to amp up that moment, she explained in a video for Vanity Fair, because she wanted “to highlight the latent homosexuality and power dynamics” underlying their shared secret.But for all that movie does so very well — its subtle swing jazz score; its beautiful black-and-white montages evocative of the photographers Gordon Parks and Carrie Mae Weems; and the delightful cat-and-mouse performances by Thompson and Negga — it deliberately limits how much access we have to Irene. Such restrictions, after having a glimpse of Irene’s full personality, further reminded me of how few stories about African American female sexuality and subjectivity have been told on the big screen.In other words, at this moment, when Black artists are being celebrated and validated as never before, what does it mean to invest in films that fully move us beyond a racist or sexist gaze and into their innermost thoughts?Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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    With 'New York Ninja,' Lights, Camera and, Finally, Action

    The 1984 kung fu film was shot, but it wasn’t completed. Now, with a new director and newly recorded dialogue, the film sees the light of day.Kung fu fights on roller skates! An ex-C.I.A. Plutonium Killer who can peel off his own face! A battalion of kid ninjas! The promise of Dolemite himself, Rudy Ray Moore, as an insult-spewing police detective!In 1984, audiences had never seen anything like the low-budget epic “New York Ninja,” in which the Taiwanese kung fu performer John Liu directs himself as a high-kicking sound man who avenges his wife’s death.And despite lurid “Coming Soon” ads in the trade magazines (“WHEN YOU BACK A TIGER INTO A CORNER HE COMES OUT FIGHTING!”), audiences never got to see it in 1985. Or 1986. Or the ensuing three decades.“It was one of those things that was on my résumé for years, but I never thought it would see the light of day,” the special effects artist Carl Morano said of “New York Ninja,” which vanished after its distribution company, 21st Century, went bankrupt and sold off its assets.All that remained was a set of film reels with six to eight hours of footage. No audio. No credits or call sheets. No storyboards. Not even a script to explain who exactly the New York Ninja was fighting and why, let alone how the roller skates came into play.Those reels eventually ended up in the vaults of the film distribution company Vinegar Syndrome, known for such disreputable titles as “Christmas Evil” and “Don’t Answer the Phone!” It took a two-year resuscitation effort for Vinegar Syndrome to bring “New York Ninja” to life. The result came out on Blu-ray earlier this month after a few raucously received appearances at genre film festivals, and a theatrical release is slated for early 2022.Liu, right, shot “New York Ninja” in 1984, but the project was abandoned.Vinegar Syndrome PicturesMuch of the reconstruction fell to Kurtis M. Spieler, who is credited as the new iteration’s “re-director” and editor. “What I tried to do was make the most coherent thing I could with the footage I had,” said Spieler, who spent evenings and weekends piecing together a workable edit and then writing a new script to match his cut.This took some effort given the source material. “They had zero resources,” said Morano, who spent most of his estimated special effects budget of $100 on the Plutonium Killer’s melting face. “Different people showed up on different days. We’d meet every morning at the Howard Johnson’s where John was staying and then take a van to the location.”When he arrived in New York, John Liu was already a cult figure in martial arts circles, known for his high kicks and his collaborations with the fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, who went on to work on films like “The Matrix” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”The huge popularity of Bruce Lee put a ceiling on just how familiar audiences were with Liu’s name, according to the film historian Chris Poggiali, a co-author of the new book “These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World.”“At the time, the studios were doing anything they could to tie in with Bruce Lee,” Poggiali said. This meant changing Liu’s name on the posters. For example, the poster for the film “Hammerfist” billed Liu as Marty Lee.By the time shooting on “New York Ninja” began in late 1984, one actor no longer attached to the project (if he ever really was in the first place) was Rudy Ray Moore. But Morano’s original shooting script, the only one known to exist, still alluded to “Detective Dolemite,” which made Morano wonder just how scrupulously the script was being followed. “My feeling is that they just kind of winged it,” he said.Poggiali described the final result as “very different from a lot of the other ninja movies at the time.” As Liu’s character frequently slips away from his co-workers to put on his New York Ninja garb and then returns as if nothing had happened, “it’s more like a crime-fighting superhero film, like Clark Kent and Superman.”The names of most of the original cast and crew are lost to time, and Spieler said Vinegar Syndrome tried to find Liu but wasn’t able to. This gave Spieler the chance to start fresh with the audio, commissioning a synth-heavy retro score by the Detroit band Voyag3r and fielding a murderer’s row of genre-film stalwarts to dub the actors.The film’s original reels, which included no actor credits, ended up in the vaults of the film distribution company Vinegar Syndrome.Vinegar Syndrome PicturesJoining the likes of Don Wilson, a.k.a. the Dragon, and Cynthia Rothrock in the recording booth was the 1980s scream queen Linnea Quigley (“Return of the Living Dead”), who here dubs the voice of the frequently imperiled TV reporter Randi Rydell. “They said, ‘You’re playing the reporter, do what you want with it,’” Quigley said. “It seemed like fun — which is wild because I think they kind of wanted it to be serious.”Or, if not exactly serious, at least not too campy. “We’re playing this straight,” said Spieler, who compared the final result to “Miami Connection,” “Samurai Cop” and other so-bad-they’re-kind-of-extraordinary titles. “We’re not trying to play up the silliness because it already comes through naturally.”While it’s impossible to know for sure, Spieler said he suspects Liu wasn’t able to complete filming before the production shut down. “The ending doesn’t feel like it was ever finished,” he said. Vinegar Syndrome originally floated the possibility of filming new scenes, but Spieler was intent on working with what they had.“I asked myself, ‘If my job was to have been an editor in the 1980s, what would I have done?’” he said. “This was how I could maintain the spirit of the original.” (In fact, he didn’t let himself look at Morano’s original shooting script until he completed his own version.)Spieler believes that the intervening decades may actually have done “New York Ninja” some favors. “We knew it was campy and silly and over the top,” he said, “but we also knew it can be appreciated from a modern-day sensibility in a different way.“It’s finding its right audience now.” More

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    She Plays a Young Serena Williams

    Demi Singleton stars in “King Richard,” opposite Will Smith.Name: Demi SingletonAge: 14Hometown: New York CityCurrently Lives: In a Spanish-style house in Los Angeles with her parents and two siblings.Claim to Fame: Ms. Singleton is an actress, singer, dancer and cellist who plays a young Serena Williams in “King Richard,” alongside Will Smith, who plays her father, Richard Williams.She started dancing at age 3, singing at age 7 and soon booked roles on Broadway. “King Richard” is her big-screen debut. “I just felt so loved and taken care of the entire time,” she said. She developed a sisterly bond with Saniyya Sidney, who plays Venus Williams. “We were on the phone with each other all day yesterday. We’re really like siblings now.”Big Break: Ms. Singleton started pursuing acting professionally at age 10, after seeing “Matilda” on Broadway. “I was able to see a bunch of young people doing what they love, and having so much fun on stage,” she said. “That’s what made me realize that I wanted to be an actress.”She booked “School of Rock” on Broadway shortly after signing with her first agency, and next played Young Nala in “The Lion King.” “It was hard in some ways, but it really wasn’t like work,” she said. “Being on Broadway is just fun, you just have an enjoyable time on stage.”Ms. Singleton plays Serena Williams in “King Richard.”Warner BrosLatest Project: For “King Richard,” which opened in theaters and HBO Max on Nov. 19, Ms. Singleton studied Serena Williams’s mannerisms, but nothing prepared her more than meeting the Williams sisters on set. “We had a very long conversation about their teenage dating lives,” she said. “It was really cool to get to see them from a different perspective, and see them talking about something other than what they’re famous for.”Next Thing: Ms. Singleton is hoping to release music within the next year, which she describes as a mix of pop and R&B. “The whole message of everything that I’m releasing is equality and love and kindness,” she said, “because we’re in such a weird time right now.”Learning Curve: Ms. Singleton had never played tennis before “King Richard.” She took three lessons before her final audition, because the casting directors wanted to see her and Ms. Sidney hit some balls together. “I was learning to play like a literal icon,” she said. “I had to mimic her. If I were to go play right now, I wouldn’t know how to play like anyone else but Serena Williams.” More