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      Bobby Zarem, ‘Superflack’ and Maker of Stars, Dies at 84

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      As a spirited impresario of public relations, he promoted entertainers, films and the “I Love New York” tourism campaign.Bobby Zarem, the exuberant press agent who fulfilled his childhood fantasies by catching rising stars and promoting them to stellar careers, died early Sunday morning at his home in Savannah, Ga. He was 84.His death was confirmed by Bill Augustin, a longtime colleague, who said the cause was complications of lung cancer.A gregarious and ingratiating Yale graduate, Mr. Zarem lasted barely 18 months on Wall Street before stumbling into a career as an indefatigable show business promoter.A largely affable Barnum, he cannily cultivated a symbiotic bond with reporters, greeted favored guests at his parties by obsequiously dropping to his knees and kissing their hands, and gushed with joyful benevolence one moment only to unleash a vitriolic but lyrical X-rated tirade the next, prompted by a perceived slight or an underling’s lapse.Mr. Zarem’s clients included (in alphabetical order) Alan Alda, Ann-Margret, Woody Allen, Michael Caine, Cher, Michael Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, Sophia Loren, Jack Nicholson, Diana Ross, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.He publicized the films “Tommy” (by staging a gala party in a Midtown Manhattan subway station) and “Saturday Night Fever” (after stealing stills of the production from the studio, which expected the movie to flop and neglected to distribute photographs of John Travolta), as well as “Rambo,” “Dances With Wolves” and “Pumping Iron,” the 1977 documentary about bodybuilding, which starred Mr. Schwarzenegger. For that film, Mr. Zarem arranged a meeting with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that helped elevate Mr. Schwarzenegger to global superstardom.Mr. Zarem with Michael Douglas in 2010. Mr. Douglas was one of Mr. Zarem’s many celebrity clients.Dave Allocca/Starpix/ShutterstockHe also played a role in initiating the “I Love New York” tourism campaign — although just how much of a role is unclear; he was one of a number of people who claimed credit for originating the slogan (the logo was designed by Milton Glaser).He was hired by William S. Doyle, the state’s deputy commerce commissioner, and said he recruited the Wells Rich Greene advertising agency to produce a television advertising campaign starring Broadway celebrities.He also promoted his own birthplace, transforming John Behrendt’s true-crime book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” (1994) into a tourism magnet for Savannah. He helped launch a film festival there in 1998 and retired there in 2010.Judy Klemesrud of The New York Times called him “Super Flack.” Spy magazine characterized him as “preternaturally energetic.” Marion Meade wrote in her biography “The Unruly Life of Woody Allen” (2000) that Mr. Zarem was “fueled by an inexhaustible tank of hot air.”And Hal Erickson, likening him to the fading publicist he inspired who was played by Al Pacino in the film “People I Know,” wrote in his book “Any Resemblance to Actual Persons” (2017) that Mr. Zarem “never worried about getting into heaven as long as he could get his people into print.”Like his theatrical clients, Mr. Zarem could deftly switch roles: from the choleric control freak grappling with the last-minute glitches in staging an event to the chivalrous host greeting every guest like a best friend.He wanted badly to be liked, but he could develop a grudge when he wasn’t.Mr. Zarem feuded venomously with the columnist Liz Smith in the 1980s after he discovered that she was writing a separate syndicated column under a pseudonym, Robin Adams Sloan, that denigrated his clients.In contrast to many of his less gregarious colleagues, Mr. Zarem’s own boldfaced name punctuated gossip columns nearly as frequently as his clients’.But despite his personal visibility, Mr. Zarem insisted in an interview with The New York Times in 2001 that his career “was for a long time hurt because I didn’t promote myself.”“People don’t know half of what I’ve done because I’m not a bragger,” he had told The Times four years earlier. He added, though, that while most of his competitors were “handlers or caterers,” he himself had “elevated publicity to an art form.”He regularly dined at Elaine’s on the Upper East Side (where he said he introduced Mia Farrow to Woody Allen), helped organize an annual Oscar-night gala (“Almost everybody here is somebody,” he said at one event), and, in an era of antiseptic tweets, was known for sending personalized handwritten notes.Endowed with a discerning eye that could identify potential stars, Mr. Zarem delivered on his boyhood dreams.“I sit here now,” he said in an interview with South magazine in 2017, “and I realize that everything I fantasized about became real.”Robert Myron Zarem was born on Sept. 30, 1936, in Savannah, the youngest of three sons in an Orthodox Jewish family. His father, Harry, owned a wholesale shoe company. His mother, Rose (Gold) Zarem, was a pianist.“I’ve had major identity problems all my life because I’m obsessed with meeting stars,” he told The Times in 1997When he was 8, he said, he and a friend cut Sunday-school classes to collect an autograph from the tempestuous actress Tallulah Bankhead, who was staying at a Savannah hotel.They planned and executed an elaborate subterfuge — learning her room number from a bellhop who worked for Bobby’s father; walking up eight flights to avoid the elevator operator; knocking on the door and refusing to be cowed when she shrieked, “Go away! I don’t sign autographs”; and then sneaking in behind a maid’s breakfast cart, prompting Miss Bankhead to lob a newspaper at them.Many years later, as a prominent publicist, he encountered Miss Bankhead and made one more fruitless effort. He was equally unsuccessful. “I still don’t sign autographs,” she said.He would continue to collect them, though. Before his father died of cancer when Bobby was 13, he would accompany him when he came to New York for treatment at a New York hospital. They would stay at the Waldorf Astoria, where Bobby would forage for famous guests.After his father died, he told Hamptons magazine, “I was scared to get close to anybody out of fear that that person, too, would disappear.”Despite a lifelong struggle with attention deficit disorder that made reading demanding, he followed his two older brothers to Phillips Academy in Massachusetts and then to Yale, where he graduated in 1958. (Danny Zarem, a fashion retailer, died in 2013. Dr. Harvey Zarem, a plastic surgeon, died in 2015. No immediate family members survive.)After earning a bachelor’s degree in political science, he worked for the United States Trust Company in New York; served briefly in the Air National Guard; was hired by Columbia Artists Management; and, starting in 1968, discovered his gift as a publicist while working for the producer Joseph E. Levine.In 1969 he went to work for Rogers & Cowan, the public relations firm, where his client roster included Dustin Hoffman. He opened his own agency, Zarem Inc., in 1974.Mr. Zarem, a workaholic, never married and didn’t drink, although he smoked marijuana to relax. He cultivated a devil-may-care style in untucked shirts and New Balance sneakers, but that style belied a fierce temper.The publicist Peggy Siegal, who once worked for him, swore that Mr. Zarem lobbed a typewriter at her when she erred in taking a phone message. (He responded that he wouldn’t have missed at such short range.) Mr. Schwarzenegger recalled in his 2012 memoir, “Total Recall,” that Mr. Zarem “always talked like he was completely confused and the world was coming to an end.”He bemoaned the current state of public relations, he told New York magazine in 2010, because the warp speed of digital media pre-empted what to a pro like him was a fine-tuned battle plan of leaks and exclusive stories.About the state of the art as he practiced it, Mr. Zarem noted, “Nobody knows what a press agent does, and if you’re smart, you keep it that way.”He claimed that he had gained self-awareness after more than three decades of analysis with Dr. Samuel Lowy, a psychiatrist who specialized in interpreting dreams. Mr. Zarem concluded that he promoted other people to magnify his own self-image.“I think that’s why I did what I did,” he told Hamptons magazine. “Not feeling that I had anything to communicate, I felt that if I made the rest of the world accept Dustin Hoffman and Ann-Margret and Cher, and all these people, then I would be accepted.”In retrospect, he said, he saw his role in the “I Love New York” campaign as a breakthrough.“My therapist once told me, ‘Anyone who saved the single greatest metropolis can’t be that screwed up,’” Mr. Zarem said. “For the first time in my life, I don’t feel the need to jump out a window if someone cancels dinner on me. Now I know who and what I am.” More

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      ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ | 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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      Watch Ben Platt Perform in ‘Dear Evan Hansen’

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      Stephen Chbosky, the director of the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, narrates a sequence with the song “Waving Through a Window.”The director Stephen Chbosky narrates a sequence from his film, featuring Ben Platt.Erika Doss/Universal PicturesIn “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.Adapting the Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen” for the big screen gave the director Stephen Chbosky an opportunity to interpret some of the show’s themes in fresh visual ways.In this sequence, the lead character Evan Hansen (Ben Platt) is struggling with anxiety on his first day of school. He sings one of the show’s signature songs, “Waving Through a Window,” as he walks the hallways. But the sequence isn’t choreographed or performed like a traditional musical.“What is distinct about the scene,” Chbosky said, “is that if you look at what’s actually happening, even though he is singing, what the singing in this moment represents is a thought in his head.” So the character isn’t so much bursting into song as he is thinking into song.Rather than “High School Musical”-style moves, Chbosky and his team instead went for a kind of visual choreography. That involved locker slams to the beat of the music and some quick cuts to represent Evan’s feelings of being both overwhelmed and ignored.“It was really choreographed to his emotions,” Chbosky said. “That was always the main thing. Where is he living? What does this mean? How does it affect him emotionally?”Read the “Dear Evan Hansen” review.Read interviews with cast members on how they found their voices.Read the review of the Broadway show.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      Roger Michell, Director of ‘Notting Hill,’ Is Dead at 65

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      He was an accomplished theater director as well as a filmmaker. But he was best known for his blockbuster romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.Roger Michell, the British theater and film director best known for “Notting Hill,” the wildly popular 1999 romantic comedy that somewhat overshadowed the rest of his extensive and diverse body of work, died on Wednesday. He was 65.His family announced his death in a statement released by his publicist. The statement did not say where he died or what the cause was.Mr. Michell’s first film, a 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel “Persuasion,” caught the eye of the screenwriter Richard Curtis, who had scored a major success with “Four Weddings and a Funeral” the year before. Mr. Curtis was looking for someone to direct his next screenplay, about a humble London bookseller who falls in love with a movie star.Though he found the idea of trying to match a blockbuster like “Four Weddings and a Funeral” to be daunting, Mr. Michell said yes immediately. He knew he wanted to cast Julia Roberts as the movie star, but he cast around for a male lead before settling on Hugh Grant, who had also starred in “Four Weddings.”“We toyed with the idea of casting someone else because of an anxiety about the film being seen as a retread, a sequel,” Mr. Michell told The Guardian in 1999. “Then we thought, ‘How ridiculous — we have the greatest actor in the world for this kind of material, wanting to do this film.’”Mr. Michell’s worries proved to be unwarranted: “Notting Hill” grossed $262 million worldwide, $6 million more than “Four Weddings” had. It was the top-grossing British film at the time (it has since been surpassed by the “Harry Potter” movies, among others), though Mr. Michell was ambivalent about its success.“Actually I sometimes wonder whether doing ‘Notting Hill’ was a bad thing,” he told The Birmingham Post in 2002, “because it was so successful, everybody is so surprised when I do anything different.”Julia Roberts, Huge Grant and Emma Chambers in Mr. Michell’s best-known movie, “Notting Hill” (1999).Clive Coote / Universal PicturesHe continued to notch critical and commercial successes. His next film was “Changing Lanes,” a big-budget thriller with Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson that did well at the box office, though most of his subsequent films were smaller productions, among them “The Mother” (2003), about a middle-aged woman’s affair with a younger man, and “Enduring Love” (2004), an adaptation of a novel by Ian McEwan. Both films starred Daniel Craig, one of the many actors who worked with Mr. Michell frequently.Mr. Michell was supposed to direct Mr. Craig as James Bond in “Quantum of Solace” (2008), but he backed out after he realized that the film had no script and was being rushed forward to meet the producers’ release date.He remained a popular director in London theater while continuing to work in film. He had a personal policy of directing only new plays, the exception being the work of Harold Pinter, his hero.“I have strong views about the kind of work I want to do,” he told The Financial Times in 2004. “That’s all that guides me. I don’t have any other kind of strategy. I’m ambitious — what else is there?”Mr. Michell was born on June 5, 1956, in Pretoria, South Africa, where his British father was stationed as a diplomat. As a child he moved around often; he lived in Damascus and Beirut, and he was in Prague to witness tanks rolling through during the city during the Soviet invasion of 1968.Mr. Michell’s first marriage, to the actress Kate Buffery, ended in divorce. He was separated from his second wife, the actress Anna Maxwell Martin. He is also survived by his children, Harry, Rosie, Maggie and Nancy.Mr. Michell studied English at the University of Cambridge. After graduating in 1977, he began working for a theater company in Brighton. A year later he got his first big break: a job as an assistant director at the Royal Theater Company in London.There he worked alongside old theater hands like the playwrights John Osborne and Samuel Beckett — whom he remembered, in a 2017 interview with The Sunday Star-Times, a New Zealand newspaper, as “the opposite of this sort of terrifying eagle presence that you might suspect from photographs.”He also worked with the next generation of directors and writers, including Danny Boyle, who would win an Academy Award for directing “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008), and Hanif Kureishi, an up-and-coming novelist and playwright.Mr. Michell and Mr. Kureishi later became collaborators. Mr. Michell directed a 1993 adaptation of Mr. Kureishi’s novel “The Buddha of Suburbia” (1990) as a BBC series, and Mr. Kureishi wrote the script for two of Mr. Michell’s films, “The Mother” and “Venus” (2006), starring Peter O’Toole.Mr. Michell’s most recent film is “The Duke,” a comedy about the 1961 theft of a painting of the Duke of Marlborough from the National Gallery in London, starring Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent. It was shown at film festivals in 2020 and is scheduled for general release next year.Although his success with “Notting Hill” vaulted him into the top ranks of English-language directors, Mr. Michell kept a low profile, preferring to let his actors and screenwriters shine — a quality that may explain why so many actors liked working with him.“As a species, stars are pretty frightening: they’re iconic and you’re not,” he said in the Guardian interview. “But like any other performers, they thrive on a good environment. Part of my job is to give the impression of enormous calm; it’s not necessarily how I feel.” More

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      Camille Cottin, de “Dix pour Cent” à Hollywood

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      Après le succès fulgurant de la série aux USA, la comédienne joue avec Matt Damon dans “Stillwater”, de Tom McCarthy. “Vous ne pouvez quasiment pas la quitter des yeux quand elle est à l’écran,” dit le réalisateur.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.Au coeur de la pandémie, à mi-chemin entre les sorties de “Ted Lasso” en août et de “Bridgerton” en décembre 2020, vous êtes peut-être tombé par hasard sur la série française diffusée sur Netflix “Dix pour cent” — “Call My Agent!”, en anglais — une parodie de l’industrie du divertissement à la fois tendre et absurde, vue depuis une agence artistique parisienne dont les agents, pour la plupart des amateurs de cinéma au grand cœur, se soumettent aux caprices de leurs clients très exigeants.Dans ce cas, vous êtes parmi les millions de spectateurs à avoir découvert Camille Cottin, l’actrice française qui incarne Andréa Martel, une dure à cuire aux yeux verts perçants qui s’échine à maintenir son agence à flot tandis que sa vie privée est en pleine désintégration.La série est l’une des rares à nous avoir remonté le moral pendant la pandémie. Elle a aussi incité le public américain à s’aventurer vers d’autres séries étrangères comme “Lupin” ou “Money Heist” (“La Casa de Papel”), à condition de surmonter “la barrière des sous-titres d’un pouce de haut” évoquée par le réalisateur de “Parasite” Bong Joon Ho dans son discours aux Golden Globes de 2020. Le succès de “Dix pour Cent” a inspiré des spin-offs en Grande-Bretagne, au Québec et en Turquie. Et il est maintenant question d’un long métrage qui verra Andrea Martel partir pour New York.Pourtant Camille Cottin, 42 ans, formée à la fois au théâtre et à la comédie à sketches, est passée complètement à côté du phénomène qu’est devenu “Dix pour cent” aux États-Unis. Et pour cause: elle était confinée à Paris avec son mari et ses deux jeunes enfants — au final aussi malheureuse que nous.“J’étais bourrée d’inquiétudes pendant la pandémie et je me sentais assez tétanisée”, nous a confié Cottin lors d’une interview par vidéo, en anglais. “Je voulais être créative, mais je ne l’étais pas du tout. Et j’avais aussi le sentiment que je ne pourrais plus jamais retravailler. J’avais peur.”“Et là, vous me dites que pendant la pandémie, tout le monde regardait “Call My Agent!”. J’étais à mille lieues de ça, au contraire, je me sentais enterrée vivante”, a-t-elle ajouté avec un rire sombre.Camille Cottin en agent artistique dans “Dix pour cent” — “Call My Agent!” aux USA — entourée de Grégory Montel, à gauche, et d’Assad Bouab.Christophe Brachet/NetflixCottin menait cette interview dans la voiture qui la ramenait chez elle après un essayage de robes pour le Festival de Cannes. (Pour les fans de “Dix pour cent”: ce n’était pas une robe à plumes comme celle qui embarrasse Juliette Binoche à la fin de la Saison 2). Dans son nouveau film “Stillwater”, Cottin est Virginie, une comédienne active et mère célibataire qui vient en aide à un père plein de remords — Matt Damon— venu à Marseille avec un plan mal ficelé. Pour la critique du New York Times Manohla Dargis, elle est “électrique”. Vanity Fair qualifie sa performance de “brillante et attachante”.La scène dans la voiture était un peu moins glamour. Sa fille de 6 ans dormait profondément, la tête sur les genoux de maman. Et quand la voiture s’est arrêtée, j’ai vu Cottin, multitâche, en pleine action, sa fille ensommeillée et une boule de taffetas rose sur un bras, son appel vidéo toujours en cours au bout de l’autre, le ciel lumineux de Paris en arrière-plan. Elle s’est interrompue un instant pour coucher sa fille, puis a poursuivi la conversation assise sur le carreau de sa salle de bain — un compromis qu’elle a fait avec son enfant qui lui avait demandé de ne pas trop s’éloigner. Puis son mari, Benjamin, rentre à la maison. “Le père est là !” s’exclame-t-elle. “Si ç’avait été Virginie, elle aurait eu à gérer cette situation seule”.Après un petit rôle en 2016 dans “Allied”, un film avec Brad Pitt, avec “Stillwater” c’est cette fois un public américain bien plus large que Camille Cottin a l’occasion de toucher. Il s’agit là sans doute d’un rôle qui la fera officiellement passer aux Etats-Unis, du statut d’actrice française peu connue à celui de sensation mondiale. Avant la fin de l’année, on la retrouvera aussi aux côtés de Lady Gaga et d’Adam Driver dans “House of Gucci” de Ridley Scott, où elle incarnera Paola Franchi, la petite amie de Maurizio Gucci (Driver). Et elle devrait retrouver le rôle d’Hélène, membre influente de l’organisation criminelle des Douze, dans la série “Killing Eve” de la BBC.Le public étranger a découvert le talent de Cottin bien avant que nous, les Américains, ne soyons confinés chez nous. Quand “Call My Agent!” est passé à la télévision britannique, Cottin a pris conscience que la série avait trouvé un public outre-Manche. C’était en 2019, et elle participait à un festival de directeurs de casting à Kilkenny, en Irlande, avec son propre agent français. Soudain, elle s’est retrouvée au centre de l’attention.“Ils me disaient, ‘Oh je peux faire un selfie avec vous?’ et moi je disais: ‘Quoi? Mais vous êtes le directeur de casting de James Bond!’,” se souvient-elle avec un éclat de rire.C’est grâce à ce voyage, puis à un deuxième à Londres, qu’elle a été castée dans “Gucci” et qu’elle a rencontré le producteur de “Killing Eve”.Camille Cottin dit qu’elle a beaucoup moins d’assurance qu’Andrea, son personnage dans “Dix pour cent”. “Quand je dois faire un choix, ça me prend longtemps, toujours trop longtemps. Et je demande l’avis de tout le monde.”Tania Franco Klein pour The New York TimesMais “Dix pour cent” n’a pas joué dans la décision du réalisateur de “Stillwater”, Tom McCarthy, d’engager Cottin — il n’avait pas encore vu la série quand il l’a rencontrée. Il a engagé la comédienne sur la base d’une audition dont il dit qu’elle les a stupéfiés, lui et ses co-scénaristes, Thomas Bidegain et Noé Debré.“Vous ne pouvez quasiment pas la quitter des yeux quand elle est à l’écran”, a-t-il dit récemment, lors d’une interview depuis la France. “Elle est un peu éparpillée, un peu dans tous les sens. Elle est drôle, elle a de l’autodérision, elle est empathique. Elle est coriace. Elle est directe. Et je continue à ressentir tout ça après l’avoir vue pendant un an et demi en salle de montage, chaque moment avec elle est intense.”Pour Cottin, le personnage de Virginie, qui est ouverte, maternelle et toujours à la recherche de quelque chose à réparer (comme le rustre venu de l’Oklahoma qu’incarne Matt Damon), est son quasi-double.“De tous les personnages que j’ai eu à jouer, Virginie est celui dont je me sens le plus proche”, dit-elle, même si c’est l’un des rares rôles qu’elle ait tournés en anglais. “Nous avons la même énergie. Et jusqu’à maintenant, on m’a surtout castée dans des rôles de femmes plus tendues. Un peu plus dans le contrôle.”Cottin est d’un naturel désarmant, évident dès le premier contact, en totale contradiction avec le vernis glacial de son personnage dans “Dix pour cent”. Elle ne se prend pas trop au sérieux — McCarthy dit qu’elle est “gaffeuse” — et on réalise vite son grand potentiel comique. Celui-ci se révèle au grand jour dans son rôle français le plus connu, le rôle principal de l’émission TV humoristique “Connasse”. Parmi d’autres exploits, elle y escalade la grille de Kensington Palace dans l’espoir de rencontrer le prince Harry.Camille Cottin avec Matt Damon et Lilou Siauvaud dans “Stillwater”. Elle a décroché le rôle sur la base d’une audition avec le réalisateur Tom McCarthy, qui n’avait pas vu “Dix pour Cent”.Jessica Forde/Focus FeaturesDominique Besnehard, l’un des producteurs de “Dix pour cent”, dit de Cottin qu’elle est “celle qui est jolie, mordante, audacieuse” et qui, dans le rôle d’Andréa, “est très douée pour passer de la dureté à la fragilité”.Pour Cottin, Andréa est un personnage qu’elle admire et comprend à la fois, mais qu’elle ressent très éloignée de sa propre personnalité.“J’ai beaucoup moins d’assurance qu’Andréa. Elle est plus sûre d’elle, plus stratégique et plus douée pour prendre des décisions”, estime-t-elle. “Quand je dois faire un choix, ça me prend longtemps, toujours trop longtemps. Et je demande l’avis de tout le monde.”Si Cottin ne manque certainement pas d’assurance quant à sa carrière, en tant qu’actrice quarantenaire, elle est très consciente que les succès qu’elle connaît aujourd’hui ne présage en rien de l’avenir.“Peut-être que si j’avais 20 ans, je me dirais : ‘Oh mon Dieu, je vais peut-être décrocher un Oscar’,” dit-elle en riant, d’un accent américain moqueur. “Ce n’est jamais vertical. Vous pouvez faire un pas, vous pouvez penser que vous êtes arrivée au sommet et puis soudain, vous pouvez descendre. Rien n’est une ligne droite. Pour moi ces projets sont des voyages, des voyages magnifiques. Je ne peux pas dire ‘Oh, maintenant que j’ai fait ça, je peux vous dire ce qui va suivre’, parce que je ne le sais pas. Et ça ne veut pas dire que ça arrivera de nouveau.”Besnehard estime qu’elle pourrait mener une carrière comme Binoche, avec des rôles à la fois en France et aux États-Unis. “J’espère que les Américains ne la monopoliseront pas”, prévient-t-il.Pour McCarthy, la trajectoire de Cottin est bien plus claire.“Je prédis de grandes choses pour Cami, et pas seulement grâce à notre film, dans lequel je la trouve sensationnelle, mais simplement parce que son heure est arrivée,” assure-t-il. “On le sent, quand quelqu’un a mérité un moment dans sa carrière et a travaillé le temps qu’il a fallu, et est prêt à en prendre les rênes.” More

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      ‘Stillwater’, l’autre tragédie américaine

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      Dans le dernier film de Tom McCarthy, le rôle tenu par Matt Damon est sur-travaillé, d’une réserve plombante. Mais l’électrique Camille Cottin donne de la force à son personnage et de la gravité à ses scènes.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.A l’évidence, quand les films americains veulent parler des États-Unis, qui plus est de sujets grandioses, profonds ou symboliques, ils ont tendance à retenir leurs coups. Cette timidité peut s’expliquer de différentes façons, au rang desquelles la peur de heurter la délicate sensibilité du public figure évidemment en bonne place. C’est ainsi que des récits éminemment politiques ne prennent que rarement parti, et que des films au ton très sérieux comme “Stillwater” finissent par couler sous le poids de leurs bonnes intentions.Dans “Stillwater”, le dernier opus du réalisateur Tom McCarthy (à qui l’on doit notamment “Spotlight”), Matt Damon joue Bill Baker. Il coche toutes les cases du personnage-type acculé par les déboires du capitalisme tardif, y compris les jobs qui ne mènent nulle part, les agonies familiales et la masculinité blessée . Il offre aussi une touche d’exotisme à l’hollywoodienne : il vient de l’Oklahoma. Ancien toxicomane, Bill alterne désormais entre le maniement du marteau et la prière. Fier, dur, solitaire, et dont l’impassibilité peine à cacher la violence qui l’habite, il mène une petite vie morose dans une petite maison morose. Il ne dit pas grand-chose, mais présente tous les symptômes du blues de l’homme blanc.Il traîne aussi un fardeau, en la personne de sa fille, Allison, (l’erreur de casting Abigail Breslin), qui purge une peine dans une prison marseillaise, condamnée pour le meurtre sauvage de sa petite amie. L’histoire conçue par McCarthy (qui a co-écrit le scénario avec d’autres auteurs) s’inspire de celle d’Amanda Knox, une Américaine étudiant en Italie condamnée pour un meurtre remontant à 2007. Une affaire qui avait fait un scandale international. La peine de Knox a finalement été annulée, et son retour aux États-Unis immortalisé par de sordides gros titres dans la presse, des livres, des documentaires et, en 2015, par un long-métrage alimentaire avec Kate Beckinsale.À l’image de ce film-là, qui traite des travers de médias vampiriques et sensationalistes, “Stillwater” s’intéresse moins aux détails de l’affaire Knox qu’aux lecons morales que l’on peut en tirer. Juste après la scène d’ouverture, puis un tour de l’habitat naturel de Bill — un paysage gothique industriel et des diners de malbouffe peu fréquentés — il rend visite à Allison, un voyage qu’il a déjà entrepris à plusieurs reprises. Cette fois, il reste. Allison pense avoir une piste pour prouver son innocence, plongeant son père dans une enquête sans fin, qui pendant un moment, accélère le rythme du film.Loin d’être un cinéaste intuitif ou innovant, et comme beaucoup d’acteurs devenus realisateurs, McCarthy se montre plus apte à diriger des acteurs qu’à raconter visuellement une histoire. Filmé par Masanobu Takayanagi, “Stillwater” rend plutôt bien — c’est sérieux et professionnel — et Marseille fait son effet, par son soleil et sa face sombre, en faisant peser une atmosphere écrasante sur Bill qui parcourt la ville de long en large en quête d’indices et de méchants. Pas en reste non plus, l’acteur franco-algérien Moussa Maaskri, sous-utilisé, tire son épingle du jeu en incarnant l’un de ces détectives privés sournois et désabusés qui, comme le spectateur, a déjà tout compris bien avant Bill.Il se passe beaucoup de choses, y compris une relation soudaine et peu convaincante avec une comédienne de théâtre française appelée Virginie (l’électrique Camille Cottin, de la série “Dix pour cent”, ou “Call My Agent!” sur Netflix). Le personnage est un fantasme, un ange gardien avec un corps de rêve et une môme adorable (Lilou Siauvaud). Parmi ses autres traits peu crédibles, elle ne s’agace même pas du fait que Bill ne parle pas un mot de français. Mais Cottin, interprète charismatique dont la fébrile intensité crée sa propre force gravitationnelle, vous tient en haleine. Elle donne de la force à son personnage et de la gravité à ses scènes – un soulagement vu la réserve plombante de Bill.Il y a peu de joie dans la vie de Bill; le problème, c’est qu’il y a aussi peu de personnalité. Il est clair que Damon et McCarthy ont pensé l’homme sous toutes ses coutures, de ses chemises à carreaux à sa démarche bien crispée. Son personnage a l’air de souffrir de constipation depuis des semaines; surtout, il semble sur-travaillé, le fruit d’une conceptualisation trop poussée sans assez de sentiment, d’humanité identifiable ou d’idées bien définies. Et comme Bill ne parle pas beaucoup, il n’émerge qu’à travers ses actes et sa présence corporelle contrainte, ses yeux baissés et son visage en partie dissimulés par la visière baissée de sa casquette de baseball.On a ici affaire, comme on dit dans le milieu, à une performance engagée. Mais c’est aussi une performance frustrante par sa platitude. Davantage concept que personnage, Bill n’est pas ce père spécifique, cet Américain mal à l’aise à l’étranger : il est un symbole. McCarthy dévoile son jeu dès la première scène en Oklahoma, avec ce plan de Billbien cadré au centre de la fenêtre d’une maison qu’il aide à démolir. Une tornade a traversé la région, rasant tout sur son passage. Lorsque Bill s’arrête pour regarder autour de lui, prenant conscience des dégâts, la caméra s’attarde sur les survivants en pleurs, les décombres et la ruine. Un bon début, riche de potentiel; mais, au fur et à mesure de l’histoire, il devient évident qu’il ne s’agit pas juste d’une catastrophe, naturelle ou pas. Il s’agit d’un présage.A l’image de “Nomadland” et de nombre de film présntés au festival de Sundance, “Stillwater” se saisit de la figure classique de l’Américain stoïque, l’individualiste endurci qui, à ne compter que sur lui-même, s’enferme dans un piège, une voie sans issue et — si toutes les pièces du puzzle narratif s’assemblent — une tragédie. Et tout comme “Nomadland”, “Stillwater” tente de dire quelque chose des États-Unis (“Ya Got Trouble” — “Vous avez des ennuis”, comme le chantait The Music Man dans la comédie musicale éponyme) sans risquer de se couper du public en citant des noms ou en soutenant une position idéologique. Les temps sont durs, les Américains aussi (du moins dans les films). Ils gardent le silence, ils persévèrent, les yeux plissés face au soleil et au vide. Il leur arrive bien des malheurs, et c’est forcément de la faute de quelqu’un — et pourtant tout est tellement vague. More

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      ‘Birds of Paradise’ Review: Dirty Dancing

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      In this florid drama streaming on Amazon, two contestants for a prestigious dance award stop at nothing to prevail.The melodrama is permanently en pointe in “Birds of Paradise,” a ballet-centered battle between rich and poor, experience and innocence.The dueling pair are students at an elite Parisian ballet academy. Kate (Diana Silvers), an American scholarship recipient and a latecomer to dance, may not be the ingénue she seems. Marine (Kristine Froseth), the daughter of the U.S. ambassador and a talented dancer, is struggling to surmount a family trauma. Only one male and one female dancer can win the school’s competition for places at a prestigious ballet company — a quest that consumes the student body and turns the two women into ardent frenemies.Adapting A.K. Small’s 2019 young-adult novel, “Bright Burning Stars,” the writer and director Sarah Adina Smith stirs up a viper’s nest of bitchiness and body shaming.“You look like a sack of potatoes,” the students’ forbidding teacher (Jacqueline Bisset) snipes to one unfortunate, cruelly pointing out a recent weight gain. Structured around a countdown to the ultimate prize, the story is a soapy slog of sabotage and betrayal. Sex and drugs are as prevalent as pliés, the absence of a likable character as irksome as the constant conniving.At moments, in Kate’s anxious phone calls home to her widowed father, or in her attempts to make do with worn-out toe shoes, we glimpse a more thoughtful movie, one that cares as much about class barriers as it does about competing. Then Shaheen Seth’s camera roams once more over bodies in motion, giving their gracefulness a chilling edge that tells us however beautiful the dance, it’s inseparable from the ugliness beneath.Birds of ParadiseRated R for taking drugs, making out and throwing up. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      Mo Abudu Isn’t Waiting for Permission

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      LONDON — Mo Abudu has always understood the power of storytelling, and the impact of its absence. Growing up here as the daughter of Nigerian parents, she found herself being asked mind-boggling questions about the time she spent in Africa, including whether she danced around a fire or lived in a tree.“Never was I ever taught anything about African history,” she said during a recent video call. And, on the television screen at home, a lack of representation of anyone who looked like her also left its mark.“It affected me in such a way that I felt like I didn’t count,” said Abudu, 57, who has since gone on to become the kind of media mogul who can do something about it. “You therefore always felt a need to overcompensate by telling everybody who cared to listen who you were.”Decades later, Abudu is getting the entire world to listen. Her company, EbonyLife Media, has produced some of the biggest TV and box-office successes in Nigeria’s history. The Hollywood Reporter ranked her among the “25 Most Powerful Women in Global Television,” and she was invited this year to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.And last summer, EbonyLife became the first African media company to sign a multi-title film and TV deal with Netflix. The first of those TV titles to debut new episodes in the United States, the Nigerian legal procedural “Castle & Castle,” arrived last week. (Netflix picked it up beginning with Season 2; Season 1 debuted in 2018 on the now-defunct EbonyLife broadcast network.)In separate interviews — one by video last month from her home in Lagos, Nigeria, and the other last summer in person, at a park near her second home, in north London — Abudu talked about the whirlwind of recent years and the challenges of building a media empire. It was all part, she said, of her quest to “sell Africa to the world,” with productions that are high-quality — and locally made.“I think people are tired of storytelling, to a certain extent, from the West because you’re seeing the same stories time and time again — can I just have something new, something fresh?” she said. “And I think the likes of Netflix have understood this.”Born in London, Abudu was sent by her parents to Nigeria at age 7 to live with her grandmother in Ondo, a city about 140 miles northeast of Lagos. Returning to Britain at 11, she said, “I found that I became kind of like an unofficial ambassador.”Growing up, Black faces were next to nonexistent in the onscreen entertainment she had access to. Those she recalled were few, including in the 1980s TV series “Fame,” which led her briefly to dream of being a dancer; and in the landmark 1977 mini-series “Roots,” about the history of American slavery, which she said left her in tears after each episode.At 30, having enjoyed a brief modeling career, she moved back to Nigeria with the goal of seizing professional opportunities she saw opening up in her motherland. Eventually, she worked her way up to becoming the head of human resources for Exxon Mobil, but she couldn’t shake an ambition she had felt since childhood: to tell the modern story of Nigeria to itself, and ultimately to the rest of the globe.With no experience in the industry, she bought an Oprah Winfrey box set, enrolled in a TV-presenting course and drew up a business plan, going on to establish the first Pan-African syndicated daily talk-show, “Moments With Mo.” She soon earned herself the unofficial title of “Africa’s answer to Oprah.”Richard Mofe-Damijo and Ade Laoye in a scene from “Castle & Castle,” which Netflix picked up for Season 2 as part of its overall deal with Abudu. The series made its U.S. debut last week. Kelechi Amadi-Obi/NetflixAlong the way, certain obstacles proved stubborn. Abudu faced discrimination on three fronts, she said: “You face inequality and racism for being Black. You face it for being African. You face it for being a woman. It happens at every point in time.”At every point, she overcame. As Abudu was contemplating her growing role in a changing media landscape, a guest on her chat-show sofa had some particularly inspiring words, she said: Hillary Clinton, who at the time of the interview, in 2009, was the secretary of state.“I said to her, ‘The stereotypical Africa is disease, despair, destitution, deceit — why is that?’” Abudu said, paraphrasing the conversation. “And she said, ‘Mo, more and more voices like yours need to be speaking on behalf of Africa.’”Abudu’s takeaway? “If you don’t take the responsibility to change the narrative, when you leave your storytelling to someone else, then you can’t blame them,” she said.By 2013, “Moments” had made Abudu a household name in Nigeria. Seeing opportunities, Abudu went full Winfrey and started a Pan-African television network: EbonyLife TV. In 2020, Abudu’s umbrella company, EbonyLife Media, abandoned its TV channel to focus on a model based on partnerships with some of the world’s biggest streamers and studios.Today, along with what Abudu described as “over 30 deals” yet to be announced, EbonyLife Media has contracts with Sony Pictures Television, AMC and Westbrook Studios, the production company founded by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.“I’ve been knocking on these international doors from Day 1,” she said, “but you know, people weren’t ready to listen.”At the start of EbonyLife TV, in 2013, the mission centered on lifestyle programming that showcased the booming, cosmopolitan continent of the 21st century. But Abudu has been gradually flexing her muscles and broadening her creative palette.“Castle & Castle,” which Abudu co-created and executive produces, is about a Lagos law firm run by a husband and wife, whose respective cases threaten to destroy their marriage. With that series, Abudu wanted to focus on legal issues that were specific to Nigeria. In one episode, for example, “there’s a case around lesbianism,” she said. “It’s actually still illegal to be in a homosexual relationship in Nigeria.”Other projects include a TV drama from Sony Pictures Television about the historical all-female West African army known as the Dahomey Warriors; the dystopian series “Nigeria 2099,” set to debut on AMC; the Netflix Original film “Oloture,” released last year, which explores human trafficking and forced prostitution; and the 2022 film “Blood Sisters,” also for Netflix, which depicts drug addiction and domestic abuse across class boundaries in Nigeria.“What unites them,” Ben Amadasun, Netflix’s content director in Africa, said about some of the Netflix titles, “is Mo and her EbonyLife team’s unique ability to portray the realities of the everyday Nigerian and bring a unique perspective to each character.”Among the other productions underway with Netflix is an adaptation of “Death and the King’s Horseman,” the 1975 play by Wole Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel Prize for literature; as well as an adaptation of the Nigerian author Lola Shoneyin’s novel “The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives.”Abudu entered show business in 2006, becoming first a successful talk-show host, with “Moments With Mo,” and later a bona fide media mogul. Her mission, as she put it, is to “sell Africa to the world.”Stephen Tayo for The New York Times“I’m a huge admirer,” Shoneyin said in a video call from her home in Lagos. Shoneyin had turned down several offers of adaptation since “Secret Lives” was published in 2010, she said, but Abudu “really kind of wooed me.”“It was very important to me that the story is told first by an African who I knew would understand the book and the characters almost instinctively,” Shoneyin added. “But also because I wanted the story to be told in the tradition of African storytelling.”Given Abudu’s attitude and ethic, she certainly fit the bill.“Gone are the days whereby you can force-feed me only American content,” Abudu said. “They don’t own all the stories to be told in this world. They’ve had their fair share of telling them.”Abudu has made Nigeria her base and her focus so far, but she is not constricting her horizons. (Already, she employs about 200 staff members across her Lagos organizations, which include the EbonyLife Creative Academy film school and EbonyLife Place, a hotel, cinema and restaurant complex.) She also wants to tell stories from South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia.That could be good news for the rest of the continent. Ultimately, she said, she would like her main contribution to be an “entire ecosystem of storytelling” — generating jobs for everyone from camera operators to costume designers — whose productions can showcase African brands and talent to continents beyond.She hasn’t ruled out a move to the United States. But if she does, it’s just a means to an end — in a field where she has already made great strides.“I will never be lost to my roots,” she said. “It’s not possible, even if I’m living and working and breathing in Hollywood; they cannot have me to a point whereby I’m ever going to forget where I came from.“I think it’s important, because by me making that transition, I am taking a whole bunch of people with me on that journey.” More