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      Ben Kingsley Seeks Out the Performances That Transcend

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      The Oscar winner, now playing Salvador Dalí in “Dalíland,” talks about “Waiting for Godot,” D.H. Lawrence and the way Britten’s “War Requiem” helps him understand history.Ben Kingsley takes his accolades seriously. Knighted in 2002 for service to the British film industry, he prefers to be addressed as Sir Ben.But even a knight needs his sleep, especially if he’s been spending every waking hour shooting a Marvel series. No matter if it’s the coronation day of King Charles III.“I wasn’t up that early but I did catch some lovely glimpses,” he said, calling from Los Angeles to talk about his latest film, “Dalíland,” out June 9.Kingsley draws on a catalog of absurdist mustaches and sexual predilections to play the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí as he prepares for an important exhibition in 1974 while his marriage to Gala — muse, helpmate, tormentor — crumbles.“It was a leap into genius that I found exhilarating and exhausting,” he said. “That sublime tightrope that he walked between caring desperately about what people thought, and yet being utterly indifferent to what they thought — that, I think, was the most challenging to portray.”Kingsley, who soared to fame with his Oscar-winning “Gandhi,” likes to keep his characters varied. His latest projects include “Jules,” out Aug. 11, about a small-town Pennsylvanian who gets close to an extraterrestrial, and the upcoming Disney+ “Wonder Man” series in which he’s reprising Trevor Slattery, his recurring Marvel role.And his cultural necessities change with his mood. “In other words, had you asked me two hours later, the list might have been entirely different,” he said. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1‘The Daughter of Auschwitz’Tova Friedman was 5 when the Red Army liberated the prisoners from Auschwitz, and she has written this remarkable book on her childhood in Auschwitz. I spent a morning with her, and it was profoundly inspiring and humbling to be in her presence. She asked me to write the foreword to her book. My commitment to the memory of the Holocaust has come to me personally by spending such time with Simon Wiesenthal, with Elie Wiesel, with Tova Friedman and other heroic, extraordinary survivors who will, as Elie Wiesel says, tell tales of their history.2Albert CamusI have his collection of essays, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” that was given to me a very long time ago, and parts of it I still struggle to fully comprehend. The language is so dense and brilliant that I get glimpses of his universe and what he has recognized in patterns of human behavior that I, too, recognize as a portrayer. I delve into that collection time after time after time, and every time I read it I have changed. Therefore, the resonance of that passage has also changed.3‘Snake’D.H. Lawrence builds the poem dramatically about how he found a snake sipping out of his water trough and clumsily throws this lump of wood. Then he says, “I think it did not hit him.” Toward the end, there’s that wonderful line, “And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords of life.” I read the poem at Dickie Attenborough’s 80th birthday. As you know, he became Lord Attenborough. And I concluded my reading by saying, “And thank heavens I did not miss my chance.”4World War I History on the PageMany of us who live in peacetime must find the First World War utterly incomprehensible, as do we find other parts of 20th-century history. Sometimes they have to be translated musically, graphically, poetically, dramatically. I’ve read A.J.P. Taylor’s history of the First World War. I have a monumental book at home in Oxfordshire, photographs of the First World War published in 1933, just when Hitler came into power. I’m even thinking about a film of the First World War.5World War I History in MusicBenjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” made that whole horrible period of history, to me, tangible. I somehow — and I can’t put it any other way — I felt it. That, I think, is what the artist does: allows us to feel that which we cannot comprehend. And that is the artist’s great gift, to share that feeling with the tribe.6Nusrat Fateh Ali KhanI saw him live at the Royal Albert Hall years ago, shortly before his tragic death. It was Pavarotti of all people who said the greatest voice in the world is Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s. And it is the most extraordinary voice, the range. Devotional music — that which transcends, that which sings to and about the higher power — it’s performed with energy and magnificence, but it comes from a humble center.7‘Waiting for Godot’I performed it with the late, great Alan Howard and was directed by the late, great Sir Peter Hall, who directed the first appearance of “Godot” ever. So it was a full circle for him. To be in a rehearsal room with that power — Beckett, Hall and Howard — was extraordinary. It was at the Old Vic, and I didn’t want the run to end. There were times onstage where I didn’t know whether I was performing or in a great act of prayer.8Sergei EisensteinI went to a very good English school and by some wonderful stroke of fate, the head of the film society decided to show some Eisenstein films. I was utterly enthralled by the scale of them. I remember [in “Ivan the Terrible”] this endless column of human beings. Now they would say to the actor playing Ivan, “Don’t worry about that, we’ll CGI it.” Which leaves the actor without his counterpart. It’s acting in a vacuum. But some directors think they can capture the same body-chemistry change in the actor as when he’s being pursued by 100,000 people. Look at the Salt March in “Gandhi.” How do you think I felt at the front of it? Extraordinary. I don’t think my sandals touched the ground.9GaudíI wondered whether Dalí would love Gaudí, both being Spanish. I’ve seen Gaudí architecture in Barcelona, and it is remarkable. It’s as if the stone is melting, a little bit like Dalí’s famous melting clock. Gaudí — melting stone, the most beautiful curves, sensual. It’s extraordinary.10‘Never Take No for an Answer’The film is about an Italian orphan called Peppino, who has a donkey called Violetta. The donkey falls very ill and he insists on going to Rome to get permission from the Holy Father, the Pope, to demolish the wall of the St. Francis chapel and let his donkey in to be blessed. I looked almost exactly like the little boy in the film and was hailed in the foyer of the cinema, mistaken for him. It left an indelible impression on me and I decided then and there, “I want to be him. I want to be Peppino.” More

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      A Look at the ‘Fast and Furious’ Franchise Feuds

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      As “Fast X” races into theaters, here’s a look at the conflicts — star vs. star, star vs. director and more — that have kept this franchise in high gear.Over the course of more than 20 years of the “Fast and Furious” — the 10th in the franchise, “Fast X,” arrives this weekend — battles have been fought, villains have been overcome, friends have become foes and lovers have been reunited. (There was even a case of alignment-altering amnesia.)Behind the scenes, though, the conflicts have been no less fractious, with stars variously attacking the producers, their castmates and the franchise itself. With so much drama onscreen and off, it can be difficult to keep track of who has feuded and who is still feuding. So in honor of “Fast X,” here’s a guide to the beefs of the “Fast and the Furious.”Brian vs. DomThe series of explosive, high-octane blockbusters involving international espionage and elaborate multimillion-dollar heists began with “The Fast and the Furious,” a relatively straightforward 2001 crime thriller about an undercover cop trying to bust a Los Angeles street racing ring. The cop was Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), and his quarry was the brawny, mysterious Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel). The pair faced off on the road, as uneasy friends turned enemies on opposite sides of the law, until their reconciling in an extravagant show of mutual respect. In the aftermath, Brian and Dom teamed up, stealing supercars and helping the feds as demanded by various plot turns.Paul Walker and Vin Diesel vs. the ProducersAfter the success of “The Fast and the Furious,” Diesel turned down at least $20 million to appear in the 2003 sequel, leaving Walker to reprise his role in “2 Fast 2 Furious” without his co-star. A third film, “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” starred neither, which Walker attributed to “politics, studio stuff, a regime decision” (though Diesel did make a cameo appearance). By the time a fourth film was proposed, Walker felt he was finished with the franchise: He told The Los Angeles Times that he found the material “stale” and questioned “if there was even an audience anymore” for another movie. It took Diesel to persuade him to put his reservations aside and sign on. “I thought, ‘Why not?’” Walker said.Dom and Brian vs. HobbsWith “Fast Five” (2011), the street-racing franchise transformed into a heist flick: Brian, Dom and the rest of their fast-driving crew head to Rio de Janeiro to steal a safe full of cash from a nefarious drug kingpin. In hot pursuit is the big-biceped Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), an agent with the Diplomatic Security Service whose motor skills rival Brian and Dom’s. They have no choice but to put up a fight — a conflict resolved in later films when Hobbs joins their team.Dwayne Johnson vs. Vin DieselIn summer 2016, toward the end of production on the eighth installment, “The Fate of the Furious,” Johnson surprised fans when he appeared to criticize the cast: “My female co-stars are amazing and I love ’em. My male co-stars however are a different story,” he wrote in a now-deleted caption on Instagram. “Some conduct themselves as stand up men and true professionals, while others don’t,” adding some colorful expletives denigrating the men. Many assumed he was calling out Diesel — a hunch later confirmed by both actors, who said they did not share any scenes together. Johnson has since slammed Diesel as “manipulative,” and he did not appear in “F9” or “Fast X.”Letty vs. the CrewDom’s wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), died in the fourth entry, “Fast & Furious” (2009), at the hands of a drug lord and his right-hand man during an undercover bust gone wrong. But she made a dramatic — if somewhat far-fetched — return two films later, revealed to have survived the explosion that seemed to kill her but suffering from amnesia. She spends the bulk of “Fast & Furious 6” (2013) on the villains’ side, fighting Dom and the crew without remembering who they are, until she’s won over by the sight of a precious heirloom. Dom works to restore Letty’s memory throughout “Furious 7.”Shaw (and Shaw) vs. the CrewThe antagonist of “Furious 6” is the nefarious British agent Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), a hardened, elite soldier ultimately defeated by Dom and his crew. “Furious 7” (2015) introduces a brother out for revenge: one Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the more ruthless sibling, who wants blood after our heroes landed Owen in a coma. Deckard has had wavering allegiances throughout the films, occasionally teaming up with Dom and company and, in the spinoff “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” partnering with Johnson’s Shaw in a classic buddy action scenario.Tyrese Gibson vs Dwayne JohnsonAfter the public remarks by Johnson about his male co-stars, Tyrese Gibson — who has appeared in seven “Fast and Furious” movies as the fan favorite Roman Pearce — seemed to turn on his fellow actor. On Instagram, he appeared to object to Johnson making the 2019 spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw,” claiming that Johnson “purposely ignored the heart-to-heart” they had by moving forward with it, and that by refusing to appear in subsequent “Fast” films with Diesel and others, he “really broke up the #FastFamily.” Johnson never responded, and in late 2020, Gibson said that the two had “peaced up” and resolved the dispute.Michelle Rodriguez vs. the Franchise2001: After signing on to play the female lead in the original “Fast and the Furious,” Rodriguez vociferously objected to her character’s intended role as the trophy girlfriend, demanding that the filmmakers rewrite Letty to be more independent-minded. She particularly took issue with a story line that put her in a love triangle with Dom and Brian: “I basically cried and said I’m going to quit,” she told The Daily Beast in 2015. Her objections were taken seriously, and ultimately the love triangle was scrapped and the character changed.2017: In an Instagram post to mark the digital release of “Fate of the Furious,” Rodriguez made the surprising announcement that she “just might have to say goodbye to a loved franchise,” unless “they decide to show some love to the women of the franchise on the next one.” Happily, Rodriguez committed to reprising her role in “F9” (2021) and beyond after reaching an agreement with Universal that brought on a female screenwriter.Justin Lin vs. Vin DieselThe director Justin Lin, who had previously helmed five of the “Fast” movies, was set to direct the latest entry, “Fast X,” but dramatically quit after shooting began. According to The Hollywood Reporter, heavy-handed studio notes, changing locations and near-constant updates to the screenplay contributed to the creative conflicts that sent Lin packing, but the final straw was a meeting with Diesel, who had some notes of his own. The meeting is alleged to have ended with a slammed door and Lin’s stepping down. Diesel obliquely acknowledged the conflict in an interview with Total Film, saying, “It wasn’t an easy time,” and adding, “Nothing but love for Justin, and nothing but gratitude for the work that he did to get us to that first week of filming.” The replacement director, Louis Leterrier, said in that interview that when he took over, he asked, “‘OK, what did Justin do? Can I see storyboards? Can I see shot lists?’ I took it all in. And then you find your bearings, and it becomes yours.” More

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      ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Premieres at Cannes

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      After paying tribute to an emotional Harrison Ford, the festival unspooled the newest sequel to decidedly mixed results. On Thursday, Harrison Ford stood before a rapturous crowd at the Cannes Film Festival and reminded us that Tom Cruise isn’t the last movie star.Ford, here with the latest “Indiana Jones” sequel, didn’t arrive at his premiere with a retinue of fighter jets, as Cruise did last year for “Top Gun: Maverick.” Instead Ford, now 80, gave the festival and the volubly appreciative audience exactly what it wanted and needed: glamour, yes, but also soul, emotion, that familiar crinkly smile and a lot of great history.That history was on display in a snappy, coherently edited homage that got the evening started. The salute took off with a clip from Agnès Varda’s “The World of Jacques Demy” (1995), itself a feature-length tribute to her husband that’s a reminder of Ford’s French connections. In the late 1960s, Demy had wanted to cast the then-unknown Ford in “Model Shop” but couldn’t convince the studio to hire him. Demy settled for another actor, but he and Varda remained friends with Ford. It’s a blast when the actor, looking at the camera, says with a smile, “I’m told that the studio said to forget me, that I had no future in this business.”After racing through other career touchstones like “Blade Runner” and “Star Wars,” the homage culminated with a title card that proclaimed Ford “one of the greatest stars in the history of cinema.” It’s no wonder that when Ford took to the stage of the Lumière theater, which with some 2,000 seats is imposingly large, he looked so visibly moved. By his side was the festival’s director, Thierry Frémaux, who, speaking in English, gushed about Ford as giddily as a kid who’s still high after seeing Indy onscreen for the first time. Rather anticlimactically, Frémaux also presented Ford an honorary Palme d’Or.“I’m very touched, I’m very moved by this,” Ford said. “They say that when you’re about to die, you see your life flash before your eyes. And I just saw my life flash before my eyes — a great part of my life, but not all of my life. My life has been enabled by my lovely wife,” he continued, looking out into the audience at Calista Flockhart. He then told the attendees that he loved them — people shouted, “We love you!” in return — and after a few more sweetly gruff words, Ford reminded the room that “I have a movie you ought to see.”That movie, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” — oops, I mean “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” — was, alas, a disappointment and not just because a funny, misty-eyed and charming Harrison Ford proclaiming his love in the flesh to fans is a tough act to follow. One problem is that the movie itself plays like a greatest-hits reel. It’s stuffed with Nazis, chase sequences, explosions, crashes and what seems like almost every adventure-film cliché that the series has deployed and recycled since it began, though unlike the Cannes reel, there’s nothing snappy about this 154-minute slog.It’s too bad. Ford certainly deserves better, and the director James Mangold can do better. (He shares script credit with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp.) Mangold has toggled between Hollywood and indiewood throughout his career, with credits that include “Cop Land,” an indie crime drama with Sylvester Stallone, and “Logan,” one of the finest Marvel-superhero movies. “Logan” was especially striking simply because Mangold managed to put his own stamp on material that all too often is so deliberately generic and industrial that the results could have come off an assembly line.“The Dial of Destiny” — the title alone didn’t bode well — isn’t terrible. It’s at once overstuffed and anemic, both too much and not nearly enough. It’s also wildly unmodulated for roughly the first half. It opens in 1944 Europe with Indy being manhandled by Nazis amid a lot of choreographed chaos, his head covered in a cloth bag. When the bag comes off, it reveals a distractingly digitally de-aged Ford, looking kind-of-but-not-really like he looked in the first couple of films. A lot happens and happens again, mostly character introductions, explanations and stuff whirring rapidly.The movie improves in the second half, slowing and quieting down enough for the actors to do more than run, grimace and shout. By then, the casting of Fleabag, a.k.a. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as Indy’s latest partner-in-adventure makes sense, whether she’s quipping or flexing her action-chick muscles. She’s fun to watch, as are Mads Mikkelsen, Toby Jones and Antonio Banderas, who exit and enter with winks and sneers. Of course the real attraction here is Ford, who holds your attention when the movie doesn’t and whose every wisecrack, flirty gaze and slow burn make it clear that he didn’t have to be de-aged because — as everyone in that vibrating room at Cannes knew — he’s immortal. More

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      Our Theater is Fighting About Diversity. Who’s Right?

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      The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on how to cast an upcoming rendition of “Fiddler on the Roof.”I am involved with a well-regarded community theater that has made significant efforts to diversify its membership, casts and audience. A conflict has arisen over a proposed production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” (Yes, we know, “Fiddler” has been done to death in community theaters. A different issue.) The director proposing the production has committed himself to colorblind casting. Others involved say that, in view of the Jewish community the play is about, they would consider this to be a cultural appropriation. How should we approach this conflict in values? — Name WithheldFrom the Ethicist:“Cultural appropriation” is like one of those discarded medical diagnoses — throat distemper, the vapors — that derive from now-discredited theories, even though they were often applied to genuine ailments. As I’ve argued before, the habit of reducing the complexities of identity and culture to a matter of ownership is an artifact of our own property-rights-obsessed culture. We’ll do better to talk about “disrespect,” and disrespect isn’t the issue here. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, the Jewish American duo behind “Fiddler,” certainly weren’t hung up on anything like cultural appropriation; early on, they were in touch with Frank Sinatra for the part of Tevye, and a previous musical of theirs centered on a crusading Christian clergyman.Still, readers will have noticed that controversies over casting — in filmed as well as live entertainment — have become commonplace. They enact a seeming clash between two ethical ideals. So it might be worth taking the time to get a clearer sense of the plot here.On the one hand, there’s a concern to create opportunities for nonwhite performers. Why shouldn’t Black people get to play Hamlet as well as Othello? On the other hand, people have asked for more demographic specificity in representation, often invoking authenticity. This approach — which rightly deplores, say, the old Hollywood tradition of whitewashing Asian roles — encompasses “color-conscious” casting and more, so that an Asian role belongs to an Asian actor, a lesbian role to a lesbian actor, a trans role to a trans actor. By the “mixing” logic of nontraditional casting, the performer’s identity doesn’t matter. By this “matching” logic of authenticity, a performer’s identity matters a lot.Each approach can uphold the value of inclusion, and each may present complications. Nontraditional casting can conjure fun imaginative spaces, modeling a world free of racism and, indeed, race. But casting for a colorblind utopia can be a problem when your aim is to depict racial injustice. The authenticity promised by the matching model, meanwhile, often implies that people who belong to superbroad categories of humanity are interchangeable. This talk of authenticity doesn’t explain why it’s a nonissue when a character of Chinese ancestry is played by an actor of Indonesian ancestry or, indeed, when an Ashanti character, from Ghana, somehow speaks like a Yoruba, from Nigeria.Nontraditional casting is of particular value where there’s a tradition to be bucked; familiar works or historical episodes can be experienced in fresh ways. I love that an open-access approach toward the classics has long been common, including in the amateur realm. In high school, I was cast as the menacing Goldberg in Harold Pinter’s 1957 play, “The Birthday Party.” (“Mazel tov! And may we only meet at simchas!”) It was relevant that the play had already been staged countless times; for variety’s sake, it was easy to discount a performer’s ancestry or age.There’s a useful analogy, speaking of Goldberg variations, in the “historically informed performance” movement in music. It’s a gift to be able to hear baroque works performed with original instruments, hewing to ornamentation styles thought to be characteristic of the period. But who would limit themselves to “authentic” performances of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations — and thus miss the marimba player Pius Cheung’s rendition? Within the realm of musical performance, happily, pluralism reigns.That’s the attitude to take with your “Fiddler.” When a show has been done to death, the task is to bring it to life, so that, in Bock’s own words, it’s “as if the audience were seeing it for the first time.” The truth is that this musical is a piece of American culture, not of shtetl culture; any appropriation was in the making of it in the first place.Mix or match? It depends on the particular ambitions of particular stagings. The ethical error is to suppose only one model is right. If the audience can get over the fact that the people on your musical stage are constantly dancing and bursting into song — as, sadly, people seldom do in real life — it can get over the fact that they might not actually look like villagers from the Pale of Settlement. If you have confidence in your director, let him fiddle with “Fiddler” as he prefers.A Bonus QuestionMy wife drinks heavily, to the point that she often repeats herself while drinking and forgets whole evenings. She already has high blood pressure, probably from drinking. She has a routine exam with a doctor soon. I know that she is not honest with her doctor about how much she drinks or her memory issues. I would like to express my concerns to her doctor, but I know it would anger my wife. What do you think? — Name WithheldFrom the Ethicist:You should express your concerns to your wife in a supportive way, and encourage her to be honest with her doctor. You might get helpful guidance in this by attending a support group for families affected by alcoholism. But the main guidance I have is negative: Inserting yourself into this doctor-patient relationship isn’t the way to go.Readers RespondThe previous column’s question was from a reader who had adopted a dog with her former partner. After their breakup, they agreed she would keep the dog since she was a veterinarian and the dog had various health issues. They also agreed her ex would be allowed to visit the dog. She wrote: “I have since started dating someone new, and he doesn’t like my ex spending time with the dog. I am at a loss about what to do.”In his response, the Ethicist noted: “You made an agreement with your ex about the dog, and though such agreements aren’t beyond renegotiation, you’re right to think that your word should have weight. What’s more, when you are starting a new relationship, it’s important to be clear about boundaries. I would be careful about just giving into your current partner. You’re worried about upsetting him. Equally, shouldn’t he worry about upsetting you?” (Reread the full question and answer here.)⬥A new partner putting up a fuss about honoring an important pre-existing commitment is an enormous red flag. The new partner’s behavior may seem innocuous now, but it is a classic sign of possessiveness that is likely to manifest in worse ways as the relationship progresses. The writer should seriously reconsider the speed with which she is investing in the new relationship. — Megan⬥A secure and healthy relationship allows one to maintain healthy contact with other people. The letter writer should decide what she prefers to do in this situation and see what happens when she makes a choice that goes against her new boyfriend’s wishes. His reaction will reveal everything she needs to know about their possible future together. — Stefanie⬥The Ethicist gave the correct response, but he didn’t state it strongly enough: This new guy is waving a giant red flag. He is asking you to break your word; go against your values (clearly you think of the dog as family deserving family visitation while he thinks of the dog as property) and he is demonstrating marked insecurity. I’m also a vet, and I have plenty of clients who share visitation. It’s unnecessarily cruel to cut off this contact — both to the dog and to the ex. — Maureen⬥Boundaries are definitely the key here. In addition to the boundaries around the new boyfriend controlling who visits her dog, it would also be appropriate to set boundaries with the ex around when he can visit. And clearly explaining to him that she has a new boyfriend may also eliminate the possibility that he’s hanging out with the dog in hopes that you two will get back together. — Brooke⬥I have been in this exact situation, and I loved the Ethicist’s response about boundaries. I was clear with my new boyfriend that I didn’t feel any tie or connection to my ex, but that the ex loved our dogs and allowing him visitation gave me a break and a trusted dog sitter. It was important to me to keep a promise I’d made. That my new boyfriend made this an issue was a big red flag, and I later ended up breaking up with him. — Molly More

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      Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nicole Holofcener on the Absurdity of Everyday Life

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      SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Sisters from another mister. Cinematic alter egos. However you define it, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nicole Holofcener have a connection that rivals the great movie partnerships of our time. New York transplants who are similar in height and in age, Louis-Dreyfus, 62, and Holofcener, 63, each have two grown sons, a healthy self-deprecating attitude and the ability to riff on any topic: cake (it’s their favorite dessert), Hollywood gossip (yes, Robert De Niro did just have a baby) and the indignities of aging.Holofcener arrives at the restaurant at Shutters on the Beach first, takes glass cleaner out of her purse and cleans her brown-rimmed spectacles. Five minutes later, Louis-Dreyfus grabs a chair, pulls out the same glasses in green and her own bottle of glass cleaner, and wipes them clean. (Am I the only one who doesn’t carry glass cleaner in her purse?)On the set of their new film “You Hurt My Feelings,” they were like two halves of the same person. Louis-Dreyfus was styled similarly to how Holofcener usually dresses: loosefitting pants, button-down blouses. With Covid protocols firmly in place at the time — those not in a scene were masked up — they were often mistaken for each other.“You definitely feel like they are separated at birth,” said the producer Anthony Bregman. “They are both mothers before filmmakers. They have the same sense of humor, the same honesty, the same potty mouth. But I think what’s at the core is that they have the same disbelief, or wonder, at the narcissism of social interaction.”Tobias Menzies, left, and Louis-Dreyfus as a long-married couple facing relationship issues in “You Hurt My Feelings.”Jeong Park/A24Take Louis-Dreyfus’s new podcast, “Wiser Than Me,” which has ranked high on the charts since it debuted in April. In it Louis-Dreyfus interviews women who are older, and therefore wiser, than her.“Maybe you’ll still be doing it when I’m old enough to be interviewed,” Holofcener told her.“I won’t,” Louis-Dreyfus replied.“And you’ll be like, she’s not that wise,” Holofcener said.“I’ll do this for eight more years and the last episode will be me talking about me,” Louis-Dreyfus said, laughing at the thought.The two first met a decade ago, when they partnered on “Enough Said,” the 2013 romantic comedy about a divorced woman grappling with sending her daughter off to college while contemplating a new love. They later collaborated on an Amy Schumer sketch that went viral but weren’t able to make another film together, until now. “You Hurt My Feelings” follows Beth (Louis-Dreyfus), a somewhat successful and happily married writer who overhears her husband, Don (Tobias Menzies), criticizing her new novel. The fallout proves devastating.The premise is yet another example of Holofcener’s ability to mine the mundanity of life for the absurd. Below are edited excerpts from our conversation.Was there an inciting incident that prompted this film?NICOLE HOLOFCENER It started brewing as soon as I started screening my movies or having people read my scripts, wondering if they’re telling me the truth or not. And believing that I can tell. What a nightmare this situation would be, if somebody that close to me revealed to someone else that they didn’t like my work, or even just one of my movies. They have to love everything, in other words, for me to feel safe.“What a nightmare this situation would be, if somebody that close to me revealed to someone else that they didn’t like my work, or even just one of my movies,” Holofcener said. Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesJULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS She’s very sensitive.HOLOFCENER I just came up with a what-if. What would be the worst scenario of somebody telling me they love something and me not believing them? I do have friends that I don’t believe. And there’s one person in particular that I don’t believe. I’m actually OK with it. Because I know they love me and get me and clearly they’re wrong. I mean, it hurts a little. They didn’t admit it.Since Nicole wrote this script with you in mind, did you connect to it immediately?LOUIS-DREYFUS Yes. I think it’s interesting to consider the notion of worth and self-worth. Am I my work? And who am I without my work? That’s certainly something I like to think about. And that this is ostensibly a great relationship between a married couple, and then the wheels just totally fall off the bus. That was kind of terrifying to consider.I told Frank Rich [the former New York Times columnist who was an executive producer of her series “Veep”] the premise of this before we shot it. He audibly gasped.HOLOFCENER Oh good. That’s my audience. Not the people who would hear the premise and go, ‘Yeah, so what? Like, what planet are you from?’Since you wrote this with Julia in mind, did that change your approach?HOLOFCENER [To Louis-Dreyfus] Just don’t listen, because it’s going to sound stupid.[Louis-Dreyfus throws her cappuccino-stained napkin over her head to avoid eye contact.]HOLOFCENER When you have Julia in your head, it’s bliss, because it just makes me funnier, knowing that she’ll do it. She just sparks my imagination.Is there a scene that you wouldn’t have written if Julia wasn’t your lead actress?LOUIS-DREYFUS Oh God.HOLOFCENER Certainly, I can see other actors doing the scenes differently, and I’m so glad they’re not in it and she is.What scene specifically?HOLOFCENER The scene where she’s sitting on the couch with her sister, she’s smoking pot. This is after she’s heard the bad news; she’s crying. It’s tragic. And you really feel for her, but you’re laughing because of that face.LOUIS-DREYFUS Oh gee, thanks.HOLOFCENER Julia walks a very fine line between comedy and drama. And that’s what I like to do with my writing. I didn’t have to do much, or anything, for her to get what I mean. We know this movie is about something fairly minor in the world of things.Louis-Dreyfus “walks a very fine line between comedy and drama,” Holofcener said.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesLOUIS-DREYFUS But also very major.HOLOFCENER But in the big picture, we’re not going to be crying for her. We hope she’ll get over it. But I think that scene works because she seems like she’s about 16. I think all of us are sometimes still 16. Especially when it comes to getting approval or not getting approval. I still think of myself that way. So that’s funny to see a grown-up person behave like they’re 16, in an honest way. Not in a movie way. Or a histrionic or a silly way.How difficult was it to shoot the scene in the street right after she’s overheard her husband trash her novel?LOUIS-DREYFUS That was very nerve-racking because we had paparazzi issues that day.HOLOFCENER It was our first day.LOUIS-DREYFUS Which sucked, by the way. We didn’t own the street. It was just brutal trying to shepherd people and get them out of the shot or into the shot or whatever. And then we have paparazzi across the street, as I’m trying to legitimately look as if I’m going to vomit. You know, that’s not a good look.HOLOFCENER And they want to take your picture.LOUIS-DREYFUS I’m trying to stay in the scene. But that look of when you’re actually heaving. I defy the most beautiful woman in the world, Isabella Rossellini is not going to look good, doing that.HOLOFCENER She did it so well that someone walked by and asked her if she was all right.We don’t often see a longtime happily married couple depicted onscreen.LOUIS-DREYFUS Normally, if you see a couple married a long time, you’re going to see them butting heads.HOLOFCENER Or having an affairLOUIS-DREYFUS Or somebody gets a heart attack. In this case, it’s much more fresh and interesting.HOLOFCENER I think there are hardly any movies about people our age. And they generally tend to be, in my humble opinion, too silly or too broad.LOUIS-DREYFUS And not real.“You definitely feel like they are separated at birth,” said the producer Anthony Bregman.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesThe majority of the characters in this film are experiencing doubt over their careers and if they can or should pivot to doing something else. Clearly, that topic was on your mind, Nicole.HOLOFCENER I feel that way. Sometimes. I wonder how much time I have left, and do I want to be doing the same thing. Is it too late and what would I do? I think a lot of my friends feel the same way. Or they’re retiring early and making pottery and are very happy. I can imagine retiring.LOUIS-DREYFUS You can?HOLOFCENER Yeah, just like, leave me alone already. I have no more ideas.Do you really feel that you’re out of ideas?HOLOFCENER Well, at the moment I’m out of ideas.Do you usually feel this way right after you’ve finished making a film?HOLOFCENER I’m usually out of ideas every day. That’s why I make so few movies. So it’s really true. I don’t know if I’ll make another movie. I hope that’s not the case. I did think that before this movie, so, you know, I’m assuming I’ll keep going for a while.LOUIS-DREYFUS You will.HOLOFCENER And my characters will grow old with me.LOUIS-DREYFUS I wasn’t thinking about this character as an age thing. Maybe that was wrong of me.HOLOFCENER She’s afraid she has an old voice. We’re all afraid of that.LOUIS-DREYFUS To tell you the truth, I feel like this age, there’s just so much more to do. There’s a huge freedom. It’s like who cares. Try it all. Risk it all. The benefit of being this age is that you have so much experience under your belt, if you’re lucky. Which you do. And I do. And you can apply it. I want to make another movie with this one. You’ve got to get an idea in your head. More

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      Bill Saluga, a Memorable Comedic Wiseguy, Is Dead at 85

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      He played many characters in his career, but he was best known by far for the one who said, “You doesn’t have to call me Johnson.”Raymond J. Johnson Jr. was a wiseguy, dressed in a zoot suit and a wide-brimmed fedora and waving a cigar in his right hand.When someone mentioned his name, the shtick took off.“Ohhhh, you doesn’t have to call me Johnson,” he would say. “My name is Raymond J. Johnson Jr. Now, you can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, or you can call me Johnny, or you can call me Sonny, or you can call me Junie, or you can call me Ray Jay, or you can call me R.J. Or you can call me R.J.J. Or you can call me R.J.J. Jr.“But you doesn’t have to call me Johnson.”And you can call his creator Bill Saluga, a diminutive comedian with a thick mustache who came up with Johnson while a member of the Ace Trucking Company, an improvisational sketch troupe whose most famous alumnus is Fred Willard. Mr. Saluga also played Johnson on various television series; on a disco record (“Dancin’ Johnson”); and, most memorably, in commercials for Anheuser-Busch’s Natural Light beer.In 1979, at the peak of Mr. Saluga’s fame as a comedic one-hit wonder, Tom Shales of The Washington Post wrote that “now everybody and his brother are doing Saluga impressions throughout this very impressionable land of ours. He’s right up there with Steve Martin’s wild and crazy guy and Robin Williams’s madcap Mork.”Bob Dylan played off Mr. Saluga’s Johnsonian wordplay, and his own name change, in his 1979 song “Gotta Serve Somebody.” He sang, in part:You may call me Terry, you may call me TimmyYou may call me Bobby, you may call me ZimmyYou may call me R.J., you may call me RayYou may call me anything but no matter what you sayYou’re gonna have to serve somebodyMr. Saluga died of cardiopulmonary arrest on March 28 in a hospice in Los Angeles, his nephew, Scott Saluga, said. He was 85 and had been living in Burbank.The Tribune Chronicle, a newspaper in Warren, Ohio, near Youngstown, where Mr. Saluga was born, first reported his death on April 8. But it did not become widely known until Hollywood trade publications published obituaries this month.William Saluga was born on Sept. 16, 1937. When Billy, as his friends called him, was 10, his father, Joseph, was killed in an accident while working at the Republic Steel mill, and his mother, Helen (Yavorsky) Saluga, started working as a bookkeeper.Billy was a class clown and a cheerleader in high school. After two years in the Navy, he became a performer. In the early and mid-1960s he was seen on a local TV station, with a sketch comedy group called the Thimble Theater and at the Youngstown Playhouse, where, for seven years, he played roles in numerous productions, including “Inherit the Wind” and “Guys and Dolls.”In 1968, he became the talent coordinator for the comedian Steve Allen’s interview and entertainment show. “If you have a special or unusual talent,” a newspaper ad for the show read, “television needs you. Call Bill Saluga. 469-9011.”In 1969, after replacing a member of the Ace Trucking Company, he created the Johnson character during a man-on-the-street sketch with Mr. Willard at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, It became part of the troupe’s repertoire until he left in 1976. By then, the group had made numerous appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”Mr. Saluga appeared from 1976 to 1977 on the comedian Redd Foxx’s variety show and a comedy and variety series hosted by the comedian David Steinberg, on both of which he played Raymond J. Johnson. For the Steinberg show, he also portrayed a New York street guy named Vinnie de Milo.“Billy was always doing Ray J.,” Mr. Steinberg, said by email. “He was relentless with it. I would say, ‘Mr. Johnson,’ and Billy would be off.” He added: “He did it everywhere. At parties. His timing and delivery were so funny every time.”The character, with a delivery based in part on the con man Kingfish from the sitcom “Amos ‘n Andy,” appealed to Anheuser-Busch, which hoped to use him to distinguish Natural Light from a rival beer, Miller Lite. In 1978, the company teamed Mr. Saluga with Norm Crosby, the malaprop comedian, for a commercial set in a bar.When a customer asks for an Anheuser-Busch Natural Light, Mr. Crosby counsels him to say, “Just say ‘Natural,’” which propels Mr. Saluga to say: “See, you doesn’t have to call it Anheuser-Busch Natural Light. And you doesn’t have to call it Anheuser Natural. And you doesn’t have to call it Busch Natural. Just say ‘Natural.’” And when Mr. Crosby says, “Johnson’s right,” Mr. Saluga says, “Ohhhh, you can call me Ray or you can call me Jay. … ”The pair would go on to do a second spot. Eric Brenner, a friend of Mr. Saluga’s, said in a phone interview that Mr. Saluga had earned significant money in residuals from the two commercials, probably the most he made in his career.For the next 40 years, he took regular acting jobs — including a hostile ticket taker at an opera house in a 1992 episode of “Seinfeld” and Louis Lewis, the comedian Richard Lewis’s fictional cousin, in three episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in 2005 — as well as reprising Raymond J. Johnson on the animated TV series “The Simpsons” (2002) and “King of the Hill” (2010). “He played outrageous characters onstage, but offstage he was very reserved,” said Bill Minkin, a friend and fellow comedian. “It was that Midwest down-home thing.”No immediate family members survive.Mr. Saluga did not mind being known primarily as Raymond J. Johnson. In fact, he said, it gave him an agreeable anonymity when he stepped out of character.“I would sit in restaurants and hear the people behind me in the booth talking about me, and I was right there,” he said on “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast” in 2017. “They didn’t know who I was, which was great.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me’ Review: Mistreated

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      The tumultuous life and death of the model, actress and tabloid superstar is related with little insight in this facile Netflix documentary.“Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me,” a new documentary about the model, actress and ’90s tabloid sensation, follows a trend established by other nonfiction portraits of démodé stars released in recent years, such as “Britney vs Spears” and “Pamela, a Love Story.” Half biography, half supercilious media studies essay, these films are intended to be sort of pop-cultural correctives, ones which deconstruct the popular image of celebrity by demonstrating (not unfairly) that their subjects were vilified and callously misjudged in their times.This movie’s director, Ursula Macfarlane, tries to show the real Smith — who was born Vickie Lynn Hogan and raised in Texas — through a combination of cruel archival news clips (The National Enquirer calls her “dumb,” Howard Stern mocks her weight); moody, true-crime-esque B-roll; and interviews with Smith’s uncle, her brother and her former bodyguard, plus a number of tabloid journalists, reality-TV producers and members of the paparazzi.The interviews are short on insights. We hear both that Smith “craved attention” and “always liked being the center of attention.” We learn that she sometimes acquired that attention in savvy ways, willing herself to superstardom through a public image she meticulously styled, and later attracted attention despite efforts to escape it, at great cost to her privacy and mental health. But the solemn excavation of Smith’s life and death — she died at 39 of a drug overdose, in 2007 — ultimately brings the movie, despite Macfarlane’s well-meaning efforts, squarely into the territory of what it’s attempting to condemn: lurid voyeurism. Smith’s contentious inheritance case, the disputed paternity of her daughter, the tragic death of her son: The movie cannot help but sensationalize these events, even though it relates them in a self-consciously plaintive register rather than a gawking one. Smith deserved better than how she was treated. And she deserves better than this.Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know MeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      How Chris Messina Forced Matt Damon to Up His Game in ‘Air’

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      The “actor’s actor” ad-libbed so many funny threats that the movie star couldn’t keep a straight face and resorted to improvisation to keep up.Chris Messina has a hard time admitting that he’s funny.Even after his hilarious turn as a silver-tongued sports agent in “Air” and six seasons as a drolly charming doctor on the sitcom “The Mindy Project,” he is surprisingly self-critical when it comes to his comic abilities.“Comedy is so hard,” he said in a recent video call from his home in Los Angeles, adding an expletive for emphasis. “It’s hard to land a joke. So I still struggle with that. I’m best when I either don’t know it’s a comedy or don’t play it as a comedy — then you might find me funny.”This is difficult to believe if you’ve seen “Air.” As Michael Jordan’s outrageous, surly representative David Falk in the story of the creation of the Air Jordan sneaker, Messina is uproarious, screaming and swearing his way through fever-pitch negotiations with voluble panache. In the most memorable exchange, Messina calls the Nike scout and marketer Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) to lambaste him for secretly visiting the Jordan family. Messina goes utterly ballistic, hurtling around his office as he barks threats and insults involving various bits of bodily anatomy. The Ringer described him as the film’s “foul-mouthed” M.V.P.“Phone calls are usually just a bore,” Messina said thoughtfully, displaying an open and eager friendliness, pleased to be discussing the details of a craft he clearly loves. “There’s no one on the other line — sometimes there’s a script supervisor reading the lines off-camera.”Messina in “Air.” His scene partner, Matt Damon, was laughing so much that there were no usable takes of the character straight-faced in that sequence.Ana Carballosa/Amazon StudiosBut for “Air,” the director Ben Affleck had the idea to shoot both sides of the conversation simultaneously. He set up Damon and Messina in offices down the hall from each other, and had two sets of cameras rolling at the same time. “It felt more alive,” Messina said. “Matt and I could talk over each other, then we could improvise, then we could come together and say, ‘How about we change this to this?’ And then go back to our offices and keep going.”As Affleck told me in a recent phone interview, “All of the great lines in that scene are Chris’s improvisation.” And those improvisations, he said, had a particularly strong impact on Damon. “Matt could not keep a straight face. I had to use Matt laughing because there wasn’t a take of him playing it straight. He tried to play it straight, and he just couldn’t.”Damon explained that “it was already really funny on the page.” But when Messina came up with threats, “it dictated how I had to play the scene,” Damon said. “I had to start ad-libbing. I started talking to the background artists next to me, going, ‘It’s David Falk on the phone, sorry,’ and I just started laughing.”“Air” is Messina’s third appearance in an Affleck-directed film, after the Oscar-winning drama “Argo” and the period crime tale “Live by Night.” Affleck said, “I always look for work for Chris because he’s always so good. Every time he’s had the opportunity, he’s always done more than I envisioned or imagined.”Though “Live by Night” was not a commercial success, Affleck said he was “particularly proud” of Messina’s performance, for which he gained 40 pounds. “I said he could wear a body suit. He said no, it wouldn’t be the same,” Affleck said. “I can’t say enough good things about him.”Damon echoed the sentiment, describing his co-star as an actor’s actor, the kind “all the other actors always talk about. Did you see him in this? Or, he’s in that, that’ll be good.”Messina’s career started on the stage. A “tried and true New York theater actor” from Long Island, as he put it, he plied his trade “mostly Off Broadway, and Off Off Broadway, and sometimes Off Off Off Broadway, in the Bronx and in Queens and on the Lower East Side.” He speaks of those scrappy early days with a nostalgic air, reminiscing about plays “where the actors outnumbered the audience, or where, when it rained, it would leak on the stage,” he said. In short, he loved it.For a long time, Messina yearned to find glory the romantic way. “I really thought, stupidly, that Mike Nichols would discover me in a play and put me in ‘The Graduate 2,’ you know? I had read about Dustin Hoffman. But that never happened.”Instead, Messina transitioned to the screen. After a couple of small, forgettable parts in films like “Rounders” (with Damon) and “The Siege,” he landed his breakout role, on the final season of the funeral-home drama “Six Feet Under,” playing the amiable, strait-laced lawyer Ted Fairwell, the love interest of Lauren Ambrose’s Claire. On the strength of his work on that HBO drama, he began landing high-profile films, including Sam Mendes’s “Away We Go” and Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” as well as recurring parts on the cable dramas “Damages” and “The Newsroom.”Matt Damon said Messina was the kind of actor “all the other actors always talk about. Did you see him in this? Or, he’s in that, that’ll be good.”Amanda Hakan for The New York TimesMost viewers, though, probably know Messina best for his work on “The Mindy Project,” starring as the sometimes ill-tempered, sometimes charismatic Danny Castellano opposite the series creator, Mindy Kaling. When casting began in 2011, Kaling was specifically seeking actors she “hadn’t seen do a lot of comedy” or, if they were experienced, “weren’t the usual suspects they always send you,” she said in a recent interview.She knew he was perfect straight away. Describing him as one of the most comical actors she’s worked with, she said Messina was “so rooted in the truth of his character that he can’t help but be funny.”She attributes that expressly to the fact that he is not a traditional comedian. “Your average sitcom actor wants to hit their moments, make the day, and go home. Chris isn’t like that,” she said. “It’s almost exhausting, the level of honesty and truth he brings to every scene. He was really listening to my character and reacting if the character did something funny or absurd. He made me a better actor. I was listening better when I was with Chris, because he set the bar so high.”Although Messina proved well suited for the role, he originally didn’t even want to do it, turning down the part multiple times before relenting. (“Mindy wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he explained.) He was, he said, “very worried about every aspect of it,” including the commitment to a network comedy with 20-plus episodes per season, potentially for many years — perhaps making it more difficult for him to do the kind of serious work he dreamed of as a performer.“I wanted to do ‘Dog Day Afternoon.’ I wanted to do ‘Midnight Cowboy,’” he said. Though he liked the role and Kaling, “I was afraid of it running forever.” And, of course, he was afraid of something else: the genre. “I was afraid of not being able to keep up with them comedically,” he said. “I am afraid of jokes.”On the other hand, being afraid is what Messina wants. “Being scared of a role, of an opportunity, being challenged, that’s what I’m looking for. Maybe it’s corny or too actorly, but I do like finding closed doors inside of me.” More