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      in Movies

      Filmed in New York, Hold the Taxis and Radiators

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      When independent movies like “Rosemead” travel to a state for tax incentives, they save money but add creative challenges.On a rainy morning this past January, Roosevelt Avenue in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens was a stream of yellow cabs, honking buses and weaving cyclists. Nearby, a film crew peering out the windows of a Chinese pharmacy discussed how to make all of that invisible.The film it was making, “Rosemead,” starring Lucy Liu as an immigrant mother with a mentally unwell teenage son, was based on a real-life story and set in the San Gabriel Valley of sunny Southern California. Any signs of the East Coast would need to be hidden. No cabs, no buses, no bare trees and overcast sky.“That’s a very New York-looking trash can,” said Liz Power, an assistant director, ruefully eyeing the green receptacle just outside the pharmacy’s glass door.Filming “Rosemead” in Rosemead, Calif., would certainly have been easier. But the producers had decided on New York over California because of tax credits.According to a survey by The New York Times, states have spent $25 billion on tax incentives over the past two decades to lure Hollywood, often competing against one another. New York State, which writes checks to studios of up to 40 percent of their costs producing a movie or TV show, has handed out more than $7 billion to entice productions from California, which has dedicated more than $3 billion to try to retain them.The movie industry says the incentives help create jobs and spending in the communities where they film, but economists have long been skeptical of whether they create enough value to justify the taxpayer cost. More

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      in Music

      Garth Brooks Names Woman Who Accused Him of Rape

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      In a court filing, lawyers for the country superstar portrayed him as “the victim of a shakedown” and asked for compensatory and punitive damages.Garth Brooks, the country superstar, has named the woman who, as Jane Roe, accused him of rape and sexual assault in a bombshell lawsuit last week.In a court filing in Mississippi on Tuesday, lawyers for Mr. Brooks portrayed the star as “the victim of a shakedown” and said the woman’s lawyers had “flouted” the authority of a judge in a related case.Litigation over the woman’s accusations began last month with a lawsuit that was filed anonymously — as John Doe v. Jane Roe — in federal court in Mississippi. The plaintiff, identified only as “a celebrity and public figure who resides in Tennessee,” said that lawyers for a woman had approached him in July with what he described as false allegations of sexual assault, and that they would sue Mr. Brooks unless he gave the woman “a multimillion-dollar payment.” The man asked the Mississippi judge to preserve the parties’ anonymity and declare that the woman’s accusations were false.In a response, lawyers for the woman said they intended to sue the man in California, saying that “Ms. Roe respectfully requests that she may commence her California action as she intended to do, and use Mr. Doe’s name, absent objection from this Honorable Court.”The court did not act, and two days later the woman filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, naming Mr. Brooks but not herself. The suit accused Mr. Brooks of raping her in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2019, and of subjecting her to repeated unwanted sexual advances for about two years. The woman described herself as a hair and makeup stylist who had worked with Mr. Brooks’s wife, the country singer Trisha Yearwood, since 1999, and had begun working regularly for Mr. Brooks in 2017.The suit drew wide coverage in the news media, and its portrayal of Mr. Brooks ran counter to the positive public image he had cultivated for decades.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Coppola Sues After Report Said He Tried to Kiss ‘Megalopolis’ Extras

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      The director Francis Ford Coppola is seeking at least $15 million in damages from Variety.Francis Ford Coppola, the celebrated director of the “Godfather” movies and “Apocalypse Now,” sued the Hollywood trade magazine Variety and two of its editors for libel this week after it reported that he had behaved unprofessionally on the “Megalopolis” set, including by trying to kiss extras.Coppola, 85, is seeking at least $15 million in damages.The Variety article, which was published in July, said Coppola had pulled women onto his lap and tried to kiss them during the filming of a nightclub sequence. The article included two videos from the set in which the director appears to be trying to hug and kiss extras.The claims echoed those in an article that was published by The Guardian in May. An executive co-producer of the film, which is scheduled to open in theaters this month, told The Guardian that he had heard no complaints of misconduct and that Coppola’s behavior during that sequence was intended to “establish the spirit of the scene.”Libel cases against public figures face a high bar in the United States. People who file such suits must prove not only that a falsehood harmed their reputation, but that the publisher knowingly or recklessly disregarded the truth.“To see our collective efforts tainted by false, reckless and irresponsible reporting is devastating,” Coppola said in a statement on Wednesday, the day his suit was filed in California state court. “No publication, especially a legacy industry outlet, should be enabled to use surreptitious video and unnamed sources in pursuit of their own financial gain.”Coppola sold part of his wine estate to put up $120 million to finance “Megalopolis,” an ambitious and experimental saga about an architect (Adam Driver) who seeks to rebuild a futuristic New York City.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 63 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Danzy Senna Discusses ‘Colored Television’

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      Long before Zendaya was our biggest young movie star, before the Kardashians became an aesthetic and economic juggernaut and certainly before Barack Obama (let alone Kamala Harris) ascended the political ranks, the novelist Danzy Senna predicted we’d soon be living through what she called the Mulatto Millennium.“Strange to wake up and realize you’re in style. That’s what happened to me just the other morning,” she wrote in a 1998 essay. “I realized that, according to the racial zodiac, 2000 is the official Year of the Mulatto. Pure breeds (at least Black ones) are out; hybridity is in. America loves us in all of our half-caste glory.”Droll, insouciant, provocative? Of course — Danzy Senna wrote it. Over nearly three decades, she has spun up hilarious (and occasionally unsettling) stories about the lives of characters who happen to be multiracial — “the country I come from,” as she put it. Her debut novel, “Caucasia,” also published in 1998, followed two biracial sisters born in 1970s Boston who are separated by their parents and whose lives take very different paths. It was a best seller.Her latest book, “Colored Television,” her sixth, satirizes Hollywood, academia, the publishing industry, the housing market, ambition and, not least, the pervasive trope of the tragic mulatto.It is also very, very funny.Like much of Senna’s fiction, “Colored Television,” which Riverhead will release on Tuesday, borrows elements from her own life and torques them to the extreme. The novel follows Jane Gibson, a biracial novelist in Los Angeles married to a brilliant, slightly mad painter named Lenny and their two young children. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Jack Russell, Great White Singer and Survivor of Nightclub Fire, Dies at 63

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      At a show in 2003 with his “Jack Russell’s Great White,” a pyrotechnics display ignited a fire that killed 100 people, including the band’s guitarist.Jack Russell, the singer who led the popular 1980s hard rock band Great White, as well as a spinoff group that set off one of the deadliest nightclub fires ever, has died. He was 63.The cause of death was lewy body dementia and multiple system atrophy, said K.L. Doty, the author of Mr. Russell’s autobiography. No other details were given.Mr. Russell’s death was announced in a post on his official Instagram profile on Thursday and confirmed by Ms. Doty. Great White also paid tribute to his death on its Instagram page.Mr. Russell co-founded Great White with guitarist Mark Kendall. The band, originally called Dante Fox, began playing in small clubs in Southern California in the early 1980s. It became Great White in 1984. The group’s first big hit, “Rock Me,” landed the No. 60 spot on the Billboard Top 100 Chart in 1987.Great White found success with its third album, which featured its biggest hit, “Once Bitten Twice Shy.” The song reached No. 5 in 1989 and earned the band a 1990 Grammy nomination.Mr. Russell briefly left Great White in 1996 to build a solo career but returned in 1999. By 2001, Great White had disbanded.In 2002, Mr. Russell and Mr. Kendall hired three new musicians and began touring as Jack Russell’s Great White, playing in small clubs. In February 2003, while performing at the Station Nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., the band’s pyrotechnics ignited a deadly fire that killed 100 people, including Great White’s guitarist, and left 230 injured. It was one of the worst club fires in U.S. history.The two brothers who owned the club, and installed the highly flammable soundproofing foam around its stage, and the band’s tour manager, who lit the blaze, were charged in connection with the fire.Mr. Russell was not charged, but members of the band agreed to pay a $1 million settlement.By 2005, Jack Russell’s Great White parted ways after “the stress from lawsuits, inner band turmoil, and Russell’s substance abuse problems, had taken its toll,” according to the All Music Guide.Great White reunited in 2007, but it was short-lived. Mr. Russell continued making music with Jack Russell’s Great White. He announced in an Instagram post in July that he was retiring because of his health problems.“I am unable to perform at the level I desire and at the level you deserve,” Mr. Russell wrote. “Words cannot express my gratitude for the many years of memories, love, and support.”Jack Patrick Russell was born on Dec. 5, 1960 in Montebello, Calif. He grew up in Whittier, Calif., and dropped out of high school to pursue music.He is survived by his wife, Heather Ann Russell, and his son, Matthew Hucko. More

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      in Television

      Matthew Perry’s Assistant and Doctors Charged With Getting Him Ketamine

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      Five people have been charged with a conspiracy to distribute the powerful anesthetic that led to the death of the “Friends” star. Three of them are pleading guilty.Matthew Perry’s personal assistant, two doctors and two others have been indicted and charged with providing the ketamine that caused his death.Jason LaVeris/FilmMagicMatthew Perry’s personal assistant, two doctors and two others have been indicted and charged with providing the ketamine that caused the death of Mr. Perry, a star on the television show “Friends,” the authorities said on Thursday.In documents filed in federal court in California, prosecutors said that Mr. Perry’s assistant and an acquaintance had worked with two doctors and a drug dealer to procure tens of thousands of dollars worth of ketamine for Mr. Perry, who had long struggled with substance abuse and addiction.The actor, who gained sitcom superstardom as Chandler Bing on “Friends,” was discovered floating face down in a hot tub at his home in Los Angeles on Oct. 28. The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office said in an autopsy report that Mr. Perry, 54, had died of “acute effects of ketamine.”An indictment filed in federal court on Wednesday detailed grand jury charges against Jasveen Sangha, who prosecutors said was known as “the Ketamine Queen,” and Dr. Salvador Plasencia, known as “Dr. P.”Ms. Sangha maintained a “stash house” in North Hollywood, the indictment said, and Dr. Plasencia, a physician at an urgent care center, was among those who worked to get the ketamine to Mr. Perry despite knowing he had a history of drug abuse.Court documents say that Mr. Perry’s personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, injected him with at least 27 shots of ketamine in the five days leading up to his death, including at least three on the day he died. An indictment said that the defendants used coded language to discuss drug deals, referring to bottles of ketamine as “Dr Pepper,” “cans” and “bots.” And it said that when Dr. Plasencia texted with another doctor about how much to charge Mr. Perry for ketamine, he wrote, “I wonder how much this moron will pay” and “Lets find out.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Bill Cobbs, ‘Bodyguard’ and ‘Night at the Museum’ Actor, Dies at 90

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      Mr. Cobbs was not a household Hollywood name, but his face was one anyone who watched TV or movies over the past several decades could recognize.Bill Cobbs, a prolific character actor whose half-century career bloomed while he was middle-aged and ranged from “Sesame Street” to “The Sopranos” to “Night at the Museum,” died on Tuesday at his home in the Inland Empire region of California. He was 90.His death was announced on social media by his brother, Thomas G. Cobbs, and confirmed by his agent, Carmela Evangelista. No cause was given.Mr. Cobbs was not a Hollywood star, but his face was one anyone who watched TV or movies over the past several decades could recognize. He appeared in more than 200 films and television shows and was also a prominent theater actor.Born Wilbert Francisco Cobbs in Cleveland, Mr. Cobbs spent eight years working as a radar technician in the Air Force, where he started doing standup comedy, he said in a 2012 interview with the podcast “Movie Geeks United.” He also worked at I.B.M. and as a car salesman.His experience in the Ossie Davis play “Purlie Victorious,” a comedy about a Black preacher’s efforts to reclaim his hometown church, had an especially profound effect on his career.“That play taught me that there were a lot of things I could say in theater, on the stage and in movies and in television, that were very important, that were meaningful things, that in addition to being a means of entertaining people and touching them in different ways, there were things you could say related to the human condition,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More