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      Late Night Riffs on Biden’s Order to Release Oil Reserves

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      “For those who don’t know, the strategic reserve is a series of caverns filled with fossil fuel and strategically located inside Rudy Giuliani’s head,” Colbert joked.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘Black Gold’President Biden announced that he would release 50 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve in an effort to lower gas prices.“For those who don’t know, the strategic reserve is a series of caverns filled with fossil fuel and strategically located inside Rudy Giuliani’s head,” Stephen Colbert joked on Tuesday night.“This is great news for me. I was just thinking of getting my wife a barrel of oil for Christmas.” — JAMES CORDEN“According to the president, this is the largest release from the reserve in U.S. history. And in response, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute released this statement: [Imitating an oil tycoon] ‘Oil! Black gold! Sweet dinosaur jelly! West Texas dirt milk, we’re rich! We’re richer than Jesus!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s not clear if this is gonna work. Energy experts have consistently said such a release would do little to lower prices at the pump. It’s also not the best look right after you come back from a climate conference: ‘We must end our addiction to fossil fuels. What’s that? Gas is $3.50 a gallon? Let the rivers be choked with crude oil and the carcasses of pelicans!’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Man in Nantucket Edition)“President Biden traveled to Nantucket today for Thanksgiving, but only after Jill made him swear on the Bible: No limericks.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s how bad Thanksgiving traffic is — even the president has to leave two days early.” — JIMMY FALLON“Reminds me of the famous ‘There once was a man in Nantucket, whose poll numbers really did suck it.’ At least he is not that orange Pol Pot who ate all his meals from a bucket.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I have a feeling Biden’s the only person who says, ‘I once knew a man from Nantucket,’ and then tells an actual story about that man.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, once Biden left for Thanksgiving the Secret Service was like, ‘Human tryptophan is on the move.’” — JIMMY FALLON“When Biden asked Obama if Martha’s Vineyard would be nice for Thanksgiving, Obama was like, ‘Uh, you should check out Nantucket.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Kimmel challenged viewers to share the weirdest thing in their mother’s house, inspired by the mom of one of his band members who collects clown figurines.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightAndy Samberg will catch up with his friend Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutLady Gaga and Adam Driver in “House of Gucci.”Fabio Lovino/MGMRidley Scott’s “House of Gucci” mostly consists of “Guccis yelling at other Guccis.” More

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      Kevin Hart Discusses His Netflix Thriller ‘True Story’

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      In a candid interview, the prolific comic and actor talks about taking a darkly dramatic turn in this Netflix thriller, and about getting support from his friend Dave Chappelle.Getting Kevin Hart’s attention occasionally requires some perseverance, but it is ultimately worth the wait.As he approached for our lunchtime interview last Thursday, Hart was in the midst of a phone call that he couldn’t get out of or wasn’t finished with. For a few minutes he walked the aisles of the MO Lounge at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in midtown Manhattan, a cellphone pressed to one ear as he strolled tantalizingly close to our table, then veered off in another direction as he continued the conversation.Then, in one seamless motion, Hart ended the call, slid into a chair across from me and switched effortlessly into face-to-face conversation mode.“Talk to me, let’s go,” he said.Hart, the 42-year-old stand-up and comic actor, keeps a relentlessly busy schedule and he seems to like it that way. You can catch him pretty much round-the-clock in lighthearted adventures like the “Jumanji” series; dramedies like “The Upside” and “Fatherhood”; animated features like “The Secret Life of Pets”; his commercials for Chase banking; any of his past stand-up specials; or his streaming talk show, “Hart to Heart.” Hours after we spoke, it was announced that the diminutive Hart will play Gary Coleman’s role in a live TV re-enactment of “Diff’rent Strokes.” And on Tuesday, his comedy album “Zero _____ Given” was nominated for a Grammy.To this expansive résumé you can now add the Netflix series “True Story,” a seven-episode thriller starring Hart as a celebrity who is racing to cover up a death he may or may not be responsible for.In “True Story,” which is scheduled for release on Wednesday, Hart plays a mega-popular comedian and actor known simply as the Kid. Following a misguided night out with his struggling older brother, Carlton (Wesley Snipes), Kid awakens in a hotel room next to the body of a dead woman — and then undertakes a series of increasingly reckless decisions in order to cover up her death and protect his career.In the series, Hart’s character and his brother, played by Wesley Snipes, get enmeshed in a murder.Adam Rose/NetflixYou might wonder if Hart can handle such a role, with its life-or-death stakes and occasionally brutal action scenes. He shares none of these concerns. As Hart explained to me between bites of French fries and sips of coffee, “True Story” was created to show that he is as capable of hard-edge drama as he is of any other genre. (Hart is also an executive producer on the series.)“When it’s all said and done with me and my career, people are going to realize that I’ve checked every box,” he said. “This is just to simply show, I got that. This is in my bag. If I get the itch to do it, I’ll create the thing to scratch it.”“True Story” arose from this ambition and from Hart’s conversations with Eric Newman, an executive producer and showrunner of the crime dramas “Narcos” and “Narcos: Mexico.”Newman, the creator of “True Story” and a writer on the series, said in a phone interview that Hart wanted to play a character who was similar to himself but who was driven to desperate measures by what he considered an existential threat.But, Newman said of the show’s protagonist: “His version of existential threat might be different than yours or mine. I might perhaps be driven to do something horrible if my children were in jeopardy. In the case of a celebrity, a famous person, if you take their career away, that is a fate worse than death.”“True Story” is largely fictionalized, but Hart’s real life has not lacked for drama. He is only two years removed from a car accident in which he sustained major back injuries, requiring surgery and rehabilitation, and which he has said left him a changed man. And it has been almost three years since he stepped down as host of the Academy Awards after some of his past jokes and comments were criticized as homophobic.While Hart has continued to reflect on the Oscars controversy, he has also received renewed public support from Dave Chappelle, his friend and fellow stand-up, who said in his recent Netflix special, “The Closer,” that Hart was treated unfairly. (“The Closer” has itself been criticized as transphobic, and dozens of Netflix employees walked out of the company’s Los Angeles office last month in protest.)Hart spoke further about his desire to make “True Story,” the facts and fiction behind the series and his understanding of the criticism that he and Chappelle have received. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.“Your biggest believer in what you do should be you,” Kevin Hart said. “Me wanting to do drama is because I know I can do it.”Ike Edeani for The New York Times“True Story” is far darker than anything we’ve seen you in before. What made you want to do this?The goal was to present a side of my talent that would never be expected. The best way to do that was to kill. How do I kill on camera? Blunt, just like that. In entertainment, the joy is doing the things that you can never do in life. Comedy has presented the opportunity to be funny in different ways. Buddy-cop movies. Action-adventure. It’s given me a world where I’ve been able to play and have fun. Well, this is the complete opposite. I’m still playing, but I get to be dark as hell.Is there a chance your audience won’t accept you in something like “True Story”?When you start doing it for the perceptions of others, you’re never going to win. Your biggest believer in what you do should be you. Me wanting to do drama is because I know I can do it. I know I’m good at it. So I’m going to do it and put this out there. I would never put that much power in someone else, to think that their opinion controls my narrative.What was it about “Narcos” that made you want to work with Eric Newman?Eric made you root for a bad guy. Although we all know how Pablo Escobar dies, you still found yourself rooting for Pablo when he’s running from the officers on a roof. You find yourself going, “Come on Pablo, get out of there.” For me, I said: “I have to be believable in this space. If I’m going to kill, how do I make people care about me in the same way?”The show’s depiction of celebrity life is informed by Hart’s own experiences.Tyler Golden/NetflixThe nonstop demands of the professional world that Kid inhabits on “True Story” seem pretty punishing. Is that how your work feels to you?When we were in the development process, I explained my world to Eric. Everybody’s giving you their energy, good or bad. Their problems. It’s: “I need you to do — ” “Can you — ?” “You know what’s going on with me, you think you can help?” When is it too much? Nobody wants to hear that you don’t want to, or that you can’t. So you find yourself getting pushed around.Do you find, as he does, that there are temptations to bad behavior around every corner?[Expletive] yes, it’s still there! It’s so easy to do dumb [expletive]. It’s available whenever you want it. Doing the right thing, living life correctly, there’s a conscious effort behind it. And it’s work. Not to say it’s work in a bad way, but you’re working constantly to make sure that you’re doing things correctly, appropriately. You need a good team around you that’s OK with saying no.How did you get Wesley Snipes to play the role of Kid’s brother, Carlton?As we really started to get into this character, we realized he was such an important piece of the puzzle. We need a real good actor that can pull Carlton off, and Wesley Snipes’s name came up. We were like, “Do you think we can get him?” I was like, “I’m going to reach out.” Wesley thought it was a comedy at first; he was a little distant. I had to explain to him that this was serious and I wasn’t joking. When he latched onto the material, he said: “OK, you’d better bring it. Because if I do it, that’s what I’m expecting.” I said, “Say no more.”[Hart excuses himself to go to the bathroom. When he returns, he is again speaking on his cellphone, this time to the filmmaker F. Gary Gray, who is directing Hart’s upcoming heist movie, “Lift.”]Is this how many balls you have to juggle to make it as an entertainer these days?My reality is insane. The amount of things that I’m able to manage and delegate and operate at the same time, it’s mind-blowing. It’s a talent within a talent. I can multitask like nobody else’s business.I assume you could dial this all back if you wanted to — just do one or two projects a year?Then what am I supposed to do with the rest of the year? [Laughs.] I’ll be twiddling my thumbs. I’ll go crazy, man.Dave Chappelle spoke in your defense at the end of his new Netflix special, “The Closer.” How did you feel about that?That’s my brother. My relationship with Dave is one that I value, respect and appreciate. In our profession, it’s a crab-in-a-barrel mentality. There’s this perception that there can only be one star or one funny guy, and we’re always pitted against each other. When you have that confidence and security to embrace another talent and stand by another talent, it says a lot about who you are. Chappelle’s operating at a different frequency, man, and I couldn’t be prouder of him.Were you concerned that his mention of you would reopen your old controversy, or put you in a position of having to defend Chappelle from the criticism he has received?In what world is a friend not going to be a friend if he wants to be a friend? With Dave, I think the media have an amazing way of making what they want a narrative to be. Within this conversation attached to Dave, nobody’s hearing what his attempt is. They’re hearing a narrative that’s been created. So the conversation is now amplified into something that has nothing to do with the beginning of what it was. That’s where it gets lost. Everybody needs to come down off the soapbox and get to a place of solution.But where is there a middle ground between Chappelle and people who have felt hurt by “The Closer”?That man don’t have a hateful bone in his body. And I don’t say that because it’s hypothetical — I say that because I know him. I know his world. I know that he embraces the LGBT+ community, because he has friends who are close to him from that community. I know that his kids understand equality, fair treatment, love. I know that his wife embeds that in their kids. I know why people embrace him. He’s a good dude.Do you agree with the argument — as some of Chappelle’s defenders have made, and as often comes up when a comedian is criticized for insensitivity — that anything said in the context of a joke is permissible?You can’t say that. “It’s just a joke,” right? I understand why people would want that to be the case. But it’s not the case. If there is a joke, there’s an attempt to be funny. You can find a joke tasteful or distasteful. If you’re a supporter of a performer, then you’re probably OK with whatever’s happening. And if you’re not a fan, you’re infuriated and you’re outraged. Rightfully so — you have every right to be. You also have a right to not support it. But the energy that’s put into wanting to change or end someone, it’s getting out of hand.Has this experience given you a new perspective on when you were criticized for your remarks?I can only relate because of what I went through. The difference in what I went through: I learned a lesson in ego. My ego blinded to me where I couldn’t see what the real thing was about. My ego had me thinking: You want me to apologize? I already did. This is 10 years ago. Why are you asking like this is me, now, when I said these things?But it wasn’t about the people that may or may not have known that I apologized. It was about the people who wanted to know that I don’t support violence in any type of way. Because I missed it, that doesn’t make me a person who hates — that makes me oblivious to a moment because I was wrapped up in my own [expletive]. I was human. You can’t lose that. And that’s what happening today: We’re losing that in the attempt to say, “I’m right and you’re wrong and that’s it.” I don’t understand how we ever evolve.Does it feel strange that comedians should be the focus of this much attention — that their words should carry this much weight?You can’t ignore the attention that comes with the stage that we’re on. The one thing you have to be conscious of now is that words have impact. You have a choice to make, as a person who has a platform, when you speak. If you want to say things, that’s your right. With those things you choose to speak on, there can come backlash. If you’re OK with the plus and the minus of it, then that’s your choice.I’m much more aware today than I was yesterday, and I’m conscious of the things that I say. I’m making sure that I’m on the side of understanding. That doesn’t take away my ability to be myself. It just means that in being myself, let’s just make sure we’re respectful in our approach. More

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      Jeff Goldblum Goes Wild With Wes Anderson and Thelonious Monk

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      The actor talks about the second season of “The World According to Jeff Goldblum” and why weeping over “Can’t Find My Way Home” is a beautiful thing.Jeff Goldblum has seemingly never met a subject he couldn’t wax rhapsodic about. Pick a question out of a hat and chances are he’ll have an opinion, expressed in a curlicue of language and anecdotes that charmingly meanders its way toward the point.Which makes “The World According to Jeff Goldblum” pretty much tailor-made for its host.Produced for National Geographic and streaming on Disney+, “The World According” follows Goldblum as he excavates little-known facts about everyday topics with wide-eyed wonder.“I like to let loose,” he said. “I really was interested in this show, because I thought, ‘There’s a vein that I’ve mined a little bit that I think I could go further with.’ I’m my so-called self, and I’m spontaneous, and I’m playful, and I’m genuinely curious about these things, so I had a blast.”And who wouldn’t while moonwalking with a sea lion or wooing a tiny dog like Goldblum does in Season 2, as he elaborates on fireworks, magic, monsters and dance? New episodes will stream early next year.In January, Goldblum will debut as the tech billionaire Tunnel Quinn in the final season of HBO Max’s “Search Party.” In April, Goldblum, an accomplished jazz pianist, is slated to appear with his Mildred Snitzer Orchestra at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. And in June he’ll return as the fan-favorite Dr. Ian Malcolm in “Jurassic World: Dominion.”Calling from the Hollywood Hills home that he shares with his wife, Emilie, and their young sons, Charlie Ocean and River Joe, Goldblum discussed why the director Wes Anderson, the jazz legend Thelonious Monk and his own backyard are essential to his life.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Wes Anderson He gathers the most interesting bunch of actors and cream-of-the-crop crew members and artisans and costume people. Even before Covid and the bubble idea, he did that. In “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” we were in Görlitz, Germany, a dollhouse candy box of a town near the border of Poland, and we were all together exclusively in this wonderful little hotel. He’s stylish and has a taste for interesting things and people and events, and he makes parties and group endeavors that are just out of this world. He had a chef come, and we would have candlelight dinners — Ralph Fiennes and all these people — and it was just great. The conversation that you always have with him is spectacular.2. Taika Waititi Taika is loose as a goose and fun in another way. You do the script a little bit, you use that as a blueprint, even in these big giant movies where the narrative has to keep moving, and he and you are obliged to not go too far off the track — even in those you go wild. At least, he and I do. He’s a comic force of nature with, just like Wes, a highly refined exemplary human soul.3. “The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan I’ve played some scientists in movies, and so my conscientious ways led me to actually talk to scientists and get together with a chaotician or two on the “Jurassic Park” movies. Carl Sagan, I never met him, but this book was his last book, written with Ann Druyan. It’s him advocating for the scientific way of thinking and the scientific method, and it’s both imaginative and disciplined, but it’s a way to be critical and skeptical and watch out for pseudoscience. It offers science as a candle in the dark, as he says.4. “Death of a Salesman” Arthur Miller is so fascinating to me, and many times when I was experimenting with, and I think misapplying, what Sandy Meisner taught me — I had the idea that I couldn’t act without really breaking myself down and getting weepy and doing the deepest work that I knew how — I used it to sometimes over-prepare with. It always just grabbed me in the worst and best and most terrible way.5. The Burns Brothers Ken Burns, I met him at an airport once, not that I know him at all, but I have come to know a little bit and may even do a little work with, believe it or not. Ric Burns, his brother, directed “New York,” a documentary series, and any time I go back to New York, I love to revisit it, because it makes you appreciate the American experiment which is exemplified by New York in ways for me that are emotional and wonderful.6. My Backyard The house where I am, I’ve been here for 35 years. In this backyard that I’ve now gotten roots into, it’s perfect for the kids and Emilie and our current experience. And I often say to myself: “Gee, this is why I made this. This is why I put this pool in and made it kind of a jungle paradise in a modest way.” I see it through their eyes and every corner of it is explored, and when I’m away and then I come back, I have a physical sense of relief and nourishment.7. Pinewood Studios That’s the place where we just shot [“Jurassic World: Dominion”], and of course it’s got a history. I love James Bond and I think they’ve shot a lot of Bond movies there. We had a challenge to do it and bubble ourselves up in the Langley hotel very near there. We took it over and were all getting tested often and having many, many protocols. Then I would spend time at Pinewood, and we made this movie with Laura Dern and Sam Neill and of course Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. I just had a great time.8. Thelonious Monk I play piano. I’m still a humble student trying to get better. Thelonious Monk, I don’t try to copy him — not that I could. As you know when you read about him and see the documentary about him, “Straight, No Chaser,” what a unique and unconventional and deep artist he was. When you hear any recording from any note that you happen to dip into, you go, “Oh, that’s Thelonious Monk.”9. Emilie’s Eggs I started making these rustic scrambled eggs where I drag some cheese around the skillet. But she’s taken over the egg-making, and it’s just so perfect. She gets this French butter that is particularly special, and then she has some French cheese that she grates over it, and there’s salt and pepper. It’s a little runny, but not very runny, and I get a knife and I cut it into several particular pieces and then I have it with some Greek yogurt and a sip of orange juice.10 “Can’t Find My Way Home” by Blind Faith I think my brother was into Blind Faith and Cream, and Steve Winwood did the original version, which struck me when I was a kid when I first heard it through him — he was an older brother, who died when he was 23. It seemed very romantic at the time: [Sings] “Come down off your throne and leave your body alone.” Then Haley Reinhart gave me a CD on which she does that song, and I was listening to it with Charlie a couple of years ago now. We were both sitting in this little easy chair, and I got very emotional and I started to cry. It was one of the first times I think that I was openly and conspicuously and freely weeping. He said, “Dada, what, what, what?” I said: “This is such a sad song. But it’s beautiful. It’s a sadness that makes you feel it’s nice to be sad sometimes like this.” More

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      Late Night Celebrates Biden’s 79th Birthday

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      Jimmy Fallon joked that when the president blew out his candles, “everyone started clapping and the lights went on and off.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Happy Birthday, Mr. PresidentLate Night belatedly celebrated President Biden’s 79th birthday, which took place over the weekend.“Biden spent his birthday in Wilmington, Delaware, and went to a 5 o’clock Mass. Man, does this guy know how to party or what?” Jimmy Fallon said on Monday night. “I mean, even Mike Pence was like, ‘Ever heard of Chuck E. Cheese?’”“Democrats call it a happy occasion, and Republicans call it proof that inflation is out of control.” — SETH MEYERS“To give you perspective on how old that is, Bill Clinton — remember him? The guy who was president almost 30 years ago? — he’s 75 now.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But you can tell Biden’s 79 because, when he blew out his candles, everyone started clapping and the lights went on and off.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Healthy and Vigorous Male Edition)“Biden kicked off his birthday weekend with a colonoscopy. Doctors said there were no traces of malarkey. Everything looked good, or everything looked as good as the inside of an elderly man’s butt can look.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor says Joe Biden is a ‘healthy and vigorous male.’ ‘Vigorous.’ Why does every presidential checkup sound like a Cialis ad? I mean we need them to run the country, not impregnate our women.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Glad he’s healthy, of course. Kind of hoping they’d find that he has that Benjamin Button disease — he’s actually getting younger every day.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Personally, I’m grateful that on Friday, history was made because Joe Biden temporarily transferred power to Vice President Kamala Harris while undergoing a routine colonoscopy, making Harris the first woman to assume presidential power. Yes, 100 years after women got the right to vote, we finally got the first female president on a technicality.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingJames Corden makes the case for why massages are strange for people in committed relationships on Monday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightLady Gaga and Tony Bennett will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutAlva SkogTorrey Peters’s “Detransition, Baby” and Kiese Laymon’s “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America” are among the 100 Notable Books of 2021. More

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      Why an NPR Quiz Show Panelist Loves Her ‘Messy Apartment’

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      Faith Salie, known for, among other things, her role on ‘Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,’ is ‘evangelical about the Upper West Side.’Faith Salie — a panelist on the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” a contributor to “CBS News Sunday Morning,” a podcast host (her latest, “Broadway Revival,” debuted Nov. 18), an actor, an author, a baker (her Coca-Cola cake, made from her mother’s recipe, is serious business), a Rhodes scholar (life isn’t fair) and a charmer — lives with her two children and one husband, as she puts it, in a postwar high-rise near Lincoln Center.“We love this area so much that it’s hard to look elsewhere for something more spacious or more affordable,” said Ms. Salie, 50, whose solo show, “Approval Junkie,” based on her 2016 essay collection of the same name, runs through Dec. 12 at the Minetta Lane Theatre. (It will also be recorded as an Audible Original.) “I’m evangelical about the Upper West Side.”She could probably learn to warble hosannas about other parts of town — yes, Ms. Salie can sing, too — but since moving to Manhattan from Los Angeles in 2006 to be the host of the short-lived news-and-entertainment radio show “Fair Game,” she has lived exclusively in a square-mile-and-a-half area bordered by Central Park West and Broadway.The art wall in the dining area is very well populated.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesFaith Salie, 50Occupation: journalist, performer, authorManhattan matriculation: “A friend told me, ‘You are so lucky to live in this apartment, because when you live in New York it’s like you’re at university, and the whole city is your campus and your home is your dorm.’ I try to remember that.”“When I came here, I was separated from my wasband, which is what I call my first husband,” Ms. Salie said. “And over a period of four years, I sublet three furnished apartments. That was my journey until I met my second husband,” she said, referring to John Semel, an education technology executive, whom she married in 2011.“I felt some sort of comfort in the transience of the places I was living,” Ms. Salie continued. “I was actually relieved, because I didn’t feel settled personally. I had so many questions: When is my divorce going to come through? Am I going to marry again? Will I ever become a mother? How will I become a mother on my own?”There was one question she didn’t have to answer, she said: “What kind of furniture do you want? The furniture I want is whatever is here.”The living room in the two-bedroom rental that Faith Salie shares with her husband, John Semel, an executive in education technology, and the couple’s two children, Augustus, 9, and Minerva, 7, is a permanent construction site.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesMs. Salie was pregnant at her wedding, something she loves to mention because, she said, it makes her sound modern. Thus, there was some urgency to finding a rental in her preferred neighborhood and settling in before baby Augustus, now 9, was born. (Daughter Minerva followed two years later.)“John had always lived on the Upper East Side,” Ms. Salie said. “And he always tells me, ‘You were adamant about staying on the Upper West Side, and I was adamant about staying married to you.’”Besides being a good guy, Mr. Semel is good with spreadsheets. He laid out all the possibilities and found the right place: a two-bedroom with nice light and a terrace. Also, fortunately, he came to the union with some “grown-up man” furniture “that he was very proud of,” Ms. Salie said.The haul included a Minotti sofa, a Ligne Roset glass-fronted curio cabinet that was a floor model, a Ligne Roset dining table and chairs, and a pair of Charles Pollock chairs, along with an Eileen Gray marble-topped coffee table that had been in Mr. Semel’s childhood home.“John’s furniture was just fine,” Ms. Salie said. “It’s not my taste, but I don’t know that I have such fully formed taste that I can articulate what my taste actually is. When you’re renting and when you have kids, there are many times when you say, ‘It’s fine.’”To be sure, many things here are a good deal more than fine to Ms. Salie. They tend to be pieces from her travels with Mr. Semel: two rugs and a fanciful painting from the Medina in Fez; a Berber door, also from Morocco, that sits atop the credenza in the entryway; cushions from Paris, London, Venice and Hong Kong that line the sofa; and a large cloth napkin from a restaurant in Florence, Italy, that hangs over Minerva’s bed.The dragon cushion is a replacement for the one Ms. Salie and Mr. Semel bought on a trip to Hong Kong. “We loved it hard,” Ms. Salie said of the original.Katherine Marks for The New York Times“The chef heard that we were on our honeymoon,” Ms. Salie recalled, “and he came out from the kitchen with a box of markers and made the most whimsical drawing on the napkin, put his hand in John’s espresso and threw some on the picture, then brought out some limoncello and sprinkled that on the picture.”But Ms. Salie seems to derive the greatest pleasure from the furniture and objects that speak to the discreet charms of family life: the purple recliner in the bedroom that she sat in to nurse her children; the artwork taped or pushpinned to a wall in the dining nook; the battery of Legos; the picture books arrayed on a library-style cart in the living room; the photos and magnetic alphabet letters affixed to the refrigerator; Augustus’s stuffed animals gathered on a section of his bed that Minerva, 7, calls “the dairy-o” (perhaps a reference to “The Farmer in the Dell,” but no one in the family is certain).The blessed patch of fresh air otherwise known as the terrace is where Mr. Semel smokes one of the more than 300 pipes in his collection, where he and Ms. Salie snap the children’s first-day-of-the-school-year photos and where they gathered every evening during the height of the pandemic to cheer for frontline workers.“It’s a very emotional place,” Ms. Salie said.A large, framed cloth napkin from a restaurant in Florence, Italy, hangs over Minerva’s bed; it’s a memento from her parents’ honeymoon.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesWhen she and Mr. Semel moved into the apartment, the space seemed ample. Ten years on, they’re bursting at the seams. It helps some that Ms. Salie has rented a one-bedroom unit a floor below to use as an office and as a studio where she records her podcasts.When she is feeling most frustrated — perhaps she has just stepped on an errant Lego piece or is futilely trying to make room on a wall for her children’s latest masterpieces — she quickly regroups.“I think, ‘You know what? If I were a set designer for a play and I wanted to show a house that was fun and not too fancy and a place of joy with parents who treasured their children, what would it look like?’” Ms. Salie said. “And I think it would probably look just like our messy apartment.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      Book Review: ‘Tinderbox,’ by James Andrew Miller

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      There’s enough animosity, jealousy, score-settling and killing gossip in “Tinderbox,” James Andrew Miller’s mountainous new oral history of HBO, to fill an Elizabethan drama. Yet the book’s tone is largely fond.The people who created HBO made something they’re proud of. They’re glad to have been there, to have had a piece of it, in the early, freewheeling decades. Most know they’ll never have it so good again.HBO went live on Nov. 8, 1972, broadcasting to a few hundred houses in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. The first thing you saw on the screen (cue screaming from future Time Warner shareholders) was Jerry Levin, sitting on a sofa. He welcomed viewers, then kicked it over to a hockey game from Madison Square Garden, which was followed by Paul Newman in “Sometimes a Great Notion.”Levin was an ambitious young lawyer who had been brought in by a cable company, Sterling Communications, to run HBO’s start-up programming. “Tinderbox” explains how Sterling eventually ran wires to all those buildings in Manhattan and elsewhere, sometimes via sublegal methods.Levin, of course, would become the architect of the most ill-judged merger in media history. At the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000, he tried to combine Time Warner, of which HBO was a subsidiary, with Steve Case’s already sinking AOL. In the ruinous wake, Levin resembled the proverbial hedgehog, the one who climbs off the hairbrush while sheepishly muttering, “We all make mistakes.”If you’re going to read “Tinderbox,” prepare for a landslide of corporate history. Students of power will find much to interest them. HBO had many stepparents over the years. Following these deals is complicated, like following the lyrics to “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.”In reverse order, Miller describes how HBO — the fly, more or less, in this scenario — has been sequentially consumed from 1972 through today: “Warner Bros. Discovery rescued it from AT&T, which had gobbled it up from Time Warner, which had saved it from Time Warner AOL, which had somehow abducted it from Time Warner, which had shrewdly outplayed Time Inc. for it, after Time had outflanked Sterling Communications long ago.”.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;}Miller, who has previously compiled oral histories of “Saturday Night Live,” ESPN and Creative Artists Agency, digs into the machinations and bruised egos behind these deals.These guys (they were mostly guys) all seemed to want to flex-cuff one another and throw enemies into the back of a van. Miller gets good quotes: “The only way I was going to sit across a table from Jerry was if I could jump across it and grab him by the throat”; “He’s a dog, he’ll follow whoever feeds him.”HBO’s famous bumper — the static, the celestial choir — didn’t debut until 1993. But the channel had an aura long before that. It began to make its mark on popular culture in the late 1970s and early ’80s, around the time I was in my teens.My family didn’t have HBO, but a friend’s did. It was where you clicked to see George Carlin say the seven words you couldn’t say on television, to watch movies with naked people in them and to laugh your ribs loose seeing comedians (Robert Klein, Bette Midler, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams) do material they’d never get away with on Carson.HBO was so sexy people went to hotels to watch it. The channel had no advertisers, and thus no one to complain about brash or steamy content.Before HBO, television in the hands of the big three networks was a wasteland — “a vast exercise in condescension,” as Robert Hughes put it, “by quite smart people to millions of others whom they assume to be much dumber than they actually are.”James Andrew Miller, whose latest oral history is “Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers.”Robert BomgardnerAn important early hire was Sheila Nevins, stolen from CBS to run HBO’s now-storied documentary unit. A Barbra Streisand concert was an early hit. Boxing was vital to the early growth of HBO, as were midweek broadcasts of Wimbledon. The channel launched a million comedy clubs. If you were a comic without an HBO special, you weren’t on the map.HBO branched out into original movies, some of which I was happy to see recalled: “Gia,” with Angelina Jolie; “Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story,” with Ben Kingsley and “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned,” based on the Walter Mosley novel, with Laurence Fishburne, among others.“Tinderbox” slows down and lingers purposefully on the turn of the century, when the so-called golden age of television began to come into view. With shows like “Sex and the City,” “Six Feet Under,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and especially “The Sopranos,” HBO changed notions of what television could be, and pickpocketed the cultural conversation from film.“The Sopranos” was not an immediate hit, but it was beloved internally. “We were putting a husky guy with a hairy back wearing a wife-beater in the lead role,” says Jeff Bewkes, a former Time Warner C.E.O. “Nobody else would do that.”HBO had good luck with its early executives. These were the kind of guys who knew what a debenture was yet had a feel for programming and knew enough to hire good people and leave them alone. HBO gave people room to run.Often the only direction given to directors and producers was: Don’t make anything you’d see anywhere else. Winning awards was more important than ratings. Before HBO, elite actors wouldn’t go near a television show.Staffers at HBO sometimes found it hard to define what HBO was, but they knew what it wasn’t. A planned Howie Mandel special was killed.HBO’s luck held for a while after “The Sopranos” signed off. Lena Dunham’s “Girls” and “Game of Thrones” were in the wings. But the souk that is the modern television world was growing crowded.HBO was no longer the brash insurgent. It passed on shows — “Mad Men,” “House of Cards,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “Breaking Bad,” “The Crown” — that went on to become crucial hits for Netflix and other cable and streaming services.Oral history is a strange form. It gives you a staccato series of micro-impressions, as if you were looking through a fly’s compound eyes. George Plimpton, who helped edit the best-selling oral biography “Edie,” was a fan. He liked it that “the reader, rather than editor, is jury.”Elizabeth Hardwick loathed the form. She thought oral histories were full of irresponsible drive-by shootings. The result, she wrote, was that “you are what people have to say about you.”Increasingly I’m a fan of the genre. I have a special fondness for Lizzy Goodman’s “Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011,” and I await the oral histories of Chez Panisse, Balthazar, Death and Company (the bar), n+1, Anna Wintour’s tenure at Vogue, Monster Energy drinks, the making of “Dusty in Memphis” and this newspaper’s Styles section.Miller is a good interviewer, but a corny writer. His interstitial material is mugged by phrases like “oodles of ambition” and words like “ginormous.” These really bugged me at the start. But this book is so vast that, by the weary end, these pats of cold margarine slapping me in the face were the only things keeping me awake.There are a lot of winning moments in “Tinderbox.” But wading through its nearly thousand pages I often felt spacey and exhausted, as if it were 4 a.m. on the third night of one of those endurance contests and I had to keep my hand on the pickup truck.HBO has retained much of its magic. “Succession”: what a treat. The sound of that bumper — the static, the choir — remains Pavlovian in its promise. But our over-entertained eyeballs have more options, and the channel’s competitors, Miller makes clear, have the long knives sharpened. More

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      Kevin Spacey Ordered to Pay $31 Million to ‘House of Cards’ Studio

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      An arbitrator ruled last year that Kevin Spacey and his production companies owe MRC, the studio behind the Netflix series “House of Cards,” nearly $31 million for breach of contract following numerous sexual harassment allegations against the actor.The secret arbitrator’s ruling, which was issued 13 months ago, was made public on Monday when lawyers for MRC petitioned a California court to confirm the award.Mr. Spacey was once the centerpiece of the hit Netflix series, which ran for six seasons between 2013 and 2018. Mr. Spacey played the main character, the conniving politician Frank Underwood, and served as an executive producer of the series.While the sixth and final season was being filmed in 2017, the actor Anthony Rapp accused Mr. Spacey of making a sexual advance toward him in 1986, when Mr. Rapp was 14. MRC and Netflix suspended production on the series while they investigated.Mr. Rapp’s public accusation came just weeks after The New York Times and The New Yorker published articles about the producer Harvey Weinstein and as the #MeToo movement was gaining steam.By December 2017, after further allegations were made against Mr. Spacey, including by crew members of “House of Cards,” MRC and Netflix fired the actor from the show.In the arbitration, MRC argued that Mr. Spacey’s behavior caused the studio to lose millions of dollars because it had already spent time and money in developing, writing and shooting the final season. It also said it brought in less revenue because the season had to be shortened to eight episodes from the 13 because Mr. Spacey’s character was written out.The arbitrator apparently agreed, issuing a reward of nearly $31 million, including compensatory damages and lawyers’ fees.A lawyer for Mr. Spacey declined to comment.In a statement, MRC said, “The safety of our employees, sets and work environments is of paramount importance to MRC and why we set out to push for accountability.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Dancing With the Stars’ and the Soul Train Awards

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      The season finale of “Dancing With the Stars” airs on ABC. And Tisha Campbell and Tichina Arnold return to host the 2021 Soul Train Awards on BET.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Nov. 22-28. Details and times are subject to change.MondayDANCING WITH THE STARS 8 p.m. on ABC. The contestants on the 30th season of “Dancing With the Stars” have danced their way through nine emotional weeks. Expect a captivating conclusion with its final four pairings of celebrities and professional dancers: The “Dance Moms” alum and TikTok star JoJo Siwa with the dancer Jenna Johnson; the N.B.A. player Iman Shumpert with Daniella Karagach; the Peloton star Cody Rigsby with Cheryl Burke; and the TV host Amanda Kloots of CBS’s “The Talk” with Alan Bersten. The youngest competitor of the season, Siwa, 18, has already made “Dancing With the Stars” history: she is the first contestant on the show to be in a same-sex pairing. “I want to be a role model for people who love love,” Siwa said in an interview with The New York Times in September.THE RED SHOES (1948) 8 p.m. on TCM. “There has never been a picture in which the ballet and its special, magic world have been so beautifully and dreamily presented,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his Times review of the film in 1948. “Here is the color and the excitement, the strange intoxication of the dancer’s life.” Based on an 1845 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name, “The Red Shoes” follows the journey of Vicky (Moira Shearer), a young ballet dancer toeing the line between two passions: true love and becoming a prima ballerina. The film, which won several Oscars, including honors for its art direction and music, glows in Technicolor, an appropriate fit for this whimsical tale of temptation, passion, obsession and sacrifice.TuesdayAn archival image as seen in “Home From School: The Children of Carlisle.”National Archives and Records AdministrationINDEPENDENT LENS: HOME FROM SCHOOL: THE CHILDREN OF CARLISLE 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The filmmakers Geoffrey O’Gara and Sophie Barksdale bring to light the stories of Arapaho children who, in the 1800s, were taken from their homes and brought to a federal boarding school in Carlisle, Pa. There, they were stripped of their culture. The filmmakers follow a group of Northern Arapaho tribal members who traveled to the school grounds in 2017 to seek answers for their people, who have spent generations fighting to bring the remains of their lost children home. In July, the children who died at Carlisle Indian Boarding School were laid to rest in their ancestral home land. While many tribes, including the Ute and Navajo, are still uncovering their own truths about similar violent histories, this documentary follows this Arapaho journey in 2017, sharing true accounts of loss, love and healing.LEADBELLY (1976) 9:45 p.m. on TCM. In this biopic, Gordon Parks, the director of “Shaft” (1971), explores a true story of Black history and exploitation, one that occurred many years before the fictional private eye John Shaft ran through the streets of Harlem. “Leadbelly” follows the life of the titular folk singer (played by Roger E. Mosley), who was known for his mastery of the 12-string guitar — and for singing a song for a Texas governor that led to his pardon from prison, or so the story goes. “He was always refining his music, which provided the order in a life that was in every other respect chaotic,” Vincent Canby wrote in his 1976 Times review of the film. (Parks’s own life was recently examined in the director John Maggio’s “A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks,” a film that, in its own way, also captures a Black artist’s journey through America.)WednesdaySPACE JAM (1996) 5 p.m. on VH1. Michael Jordan stars alongside Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rest of the Looney Tunes entourage in this comedic amalgamation of mid-’90s live action and animation. Classic cartoon shenanigans ensue as Jordan is (literally) sucked into the world of Looney Tunes through a sand trap and called upon by the Tune Squad to help save the day (by playing a basketball game, naturally). The battle royale pins the Nerdlucks, an alien team led by the Tunes’s arch nemesis, Swackhammer (voiced by Danny DeVito), against Jordan and the Tune Squad. The good guys are assisted by Bill Murray, who looks slightly out of place but very ready to rumble in a Tune Squad jersey. Can the Tune Squad defend their home? Is that all, folks? (The gang reappeared in “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” starring LeBron James, this year.)ThursdayBACK TO THE FUTURE (1985) 7:30 p.m. on Syfy. This blast from the past — to the future — takes us for a ride with the high schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in his DeLorean turned time machine, built by the witty and unconventional scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). After a shocking encounter in an abandoned mall parking lot, McFly puts the pedal to the time-flying metal. He lands in a 1955 brimming with wiseguys and high school ne’er-do-wells.FridayGal Gadot in “Wonder Woman.”Clay Enos/DC Comics and Warner Bros.WONDER WOMAN (2017) 7 p.m. on TNT. Patty Jenkins’s interpretation of “Wonder Woman” gives the beloved DC Comics warrior an origin story with weight. The soon-to-be superhero, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), is raised by an all-female warrior clan that is hidden away from humans on a mystical island. Diana, though, has felt a deep connection to the outside world since her youth. The veil between her world and the world of the humans is torn open when a World War I-era plane crashes into the water near the island and Diana saves its pilot, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), from drowning. Afterward, Diana finds herself facing “the war to end all wars” head on.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More