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      ‘Bring Your Own Brigade’ Review: Some Say the World Will End in Fire

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      In her new documentary, Lucy Walker looks at California’s apocalyptic fires and finds more than the usual smoke and politics.A few times a year, I pull out our HEPA filter and begin reassuring worried friends and family members that, no, the city of Los Angeles, where I live, isn’t burning — or at least not yet. The air quality here is almost always poor, of course, but I tend to switch on the air filter only when the smoke comes, filling the basin and darkening the sky.“The city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself,” Joan Didion wrote in 1967. It was two years after the Watts uprising, but Didion wasn’t writing about race and reckoning, she was creating a poetically apocalyptic image of the city and, by extension, California. Decades later, she returned to the topic, using a phrase — “fire season” — that now feels obsolete. In the age of enduring drought and climate change, the wildfires never seem to go out in the West, where so many burned in July that the smoke reached the East Coast.In “Bring Your Own Brigade,” the director Lucy Walker doesn’t simply look at the fires; she investigates and tries to understand them. It’s a tough, smart, impressive movie, and one of its virtues is that Walker, a British transplant to Los Angeles, doesn’t seem to have figured it all out before she started shooting. She comes across as open, curious and rightly concerned, but her approach — the way she looks and listens, and how she shapes the material — gives the movie the quality of discovery. (She’s also pleasantly free of the boosterism or the smug hostility that characterizes so much coverage of California.)Specific and universal, harrowing and hopeful, “Bring Your Own Brigade” opens on a world in flames. It’s the present day and everywhere — in Australia, Greece, the United States — fires are burning. Ignited by lightning strikes, downed power lines and a long, catastrophic history of human error, fire is swallowing acres by the mile, destroying homes and neighborhoods, and killing every living thing in its path. It’s terrifying and, if you can make it past the movie’s heartbreaking early images, most notably of a piteously singed and whimpering koala, you soon understand that your terror is justified.To tell the story of this global conflagration, Walker has narrowed in on California, turning her sights on a pair of megafires that began burning at opposite ends of the state on Nov. 8, 2018. (There was also a mass shooting that same day.) One started in Malibu, the popular if modestly populated (about 12,000 people) beach city that snakes along 21 miles of the state’s southern coastline and runs adjacent to a major highway; the other, deadlier fire ignited near Paradise, a town in a lushly, alarmingly forested pocket of Northern California and which, at the time, had more than double Malibu’s population.The contrasts between the areas prove instructive, as do their similarities. As Walker explains, Paradise is tucked into a Republican-leaning part of the state (though its county went for Joe Biden), while Malibu sits in reliably blue Los Angeles County. In 2019, the median property value in Paradise was $223,400 (per the website Data USA); in Malibu, it was $2 million, the city’s Gidget-era surf shacks supplanted by mansions ringed with imported palm trees and incongruously bright green lawns. But, as Walker finds, despite their demographic differences, each area has a history of going up in flames.Drawing on both archival and original footage — including some extremely distressing cellphone imagery and 911 calls — Walker is on the ground soon after the infernos erupt, riding shotgun with a fire battalion chief in Southern California and interviewing residents who managed to get out of Paradise alive. She jumps around in time a bit, shifting forward and back as she surveys the terrain, fills in the backdrop and introduces a range of survivors, heroes, scientists and activists. She seeks answers and keeps seeking, building on regional contrasts to create a larger global picture. (Three cinematographers shot the movie and three editors seamlessly pieced it together.)The story Walker tells is deeply troubling and often infuriating, and stretches back past 1542, the year that the Iberian explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo dropped anchor in an inlet now known as the Los Angeles harbor region. He named the area La Bahia de las Fumas, or the Bay of Smokes. For thousands of years, native peoples up and down the West Coast had built campfires, but also used fire to productively manage the land. In the centuries since, fire management has come to mean fire suppression at any cost. The problem is, as Walker methodically details, fire suppression isn’t working: The top six largest California wildfires in the past 89 years have all happened since 2018.That’s bleak, but I’m grateful to Walker for not leaving me feeling entirely hopeless about the future of my home and — because this movie is fundamentally about our planet — yours as well. Climate change is here, there’s no question. But, she argues, we can do much more than curl up in a fetal position. The problem, as always, is people. And when, a year after Paradise burned, residents in a meeting complain about proposed fire codes that may well save their lives in the next conflagration, you may shake your head, aghast. Human beings have a disastrous habit of ignoring our past, but Lucy Walker wants us to know that there’s no ignoring the fires already destroying our future.Bring Your Own BrigadeRated R for upsetting images and audio of people trapped by fire. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Music

      Testing Britney Spears: Restoring Rights Can Be Rare and Difficult

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      To get out of conservatorship, the pop star will likely have to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, an uneasy melding of legal standards and mental health criteria.Her voice quaking with anger and despair, the pop star Britney Spears has asked repeatedly in court to be freed from the conservatorship that has controlled her money and personal life for 13 years. What’s more, she asked the judge to sever the arrangement without making her undergo a psychological evaluation.It’s a demand that legal experts say is unlikely to be granted. The mental health assessment is usually the pole star in a constellation of evidence that a judge considers in deciding whether to restore independence.Its underlying purpose is to determine whether the conditions that led to the imposition of the conservatorship have stabilized or been resolved.The evaluation process, which uneasily melds mental health criteria with legal standards, illustrates why the exit from strict oversight is difficult and rare. State laws are often ambiguous. And their application can vary from county to county, judge to judge, case to case.Isn’t Ms. Spears’s artistic and financial success proof she is self-sufficient?Yes and no. A judge looks for what, in law, is called “capacity.” The term generally refers to benchmarks in a person’s functional and cognitive ability as well as their vulnerability to harm or coercion.Under California law, which governs Ms. Spears’s case, a person deemed to have capacity can articulate risks and benefits in making decisions about medical care, wills, marriage and contracts (such as hiring a lawyer), and can feed, clothe and shelter themselves.Annette Swain, a Los Angeles psychologist who does neuropsychological assessments, said that because someone doesn’t always show good judgment, it doesn’t mean they lack capacity. “We all can make bad decisions at many points in our lives,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we should have our rights taken away.”Even so, Ms. Spears’s professional and financial successes do not directly speak to whether she has regained “legal mental capacity,” which she was found to lack in 2008, after a series of public breakdowns, breathlessly captured by the media. At that time, a judge ruled that Ms. Spears, who did not appear in court, was so fragile that a conservatorship was warranted.Judges authorize conservatorships usually for one of three broad categories: a severe psychiatric breakdown; a chronic, worsening condition like dementia; or an intellectual or physical disability that critically impairs function.Markers indicating a person has regained capacity appear to set a low bar. But in practice, the bar can be quite high.“‘Restored to capacity’ before the psychotic break? Or the age the person is now? That expression is fraught with importing value judgment,” said Robert Dinerstein, a disability rights law professor at American University.Records detailing grounds for the petition from Ms. Spears’s father, Jamie Spears, to become his daughter’s conservator are sealed. A few factors suggest the judge at the outset regarded the situation as serious. She appointed conservators to oversee Ms. Spears’s personal life as well as finances. She also ruled that Ms. Spears could not hire her own lawyer, though a lawyer the singer consulted at the time said he thought she was capable of that.Earlier this month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny said Ms. Spears could retain her own counsel.Does “capacity” differ among states?Yes. Some states, like California, detail basic functional abilities. Others do not. Colorado acknowledges modern advances like “appropriate and reasonably available technological assistance.” Illinois looks for “mental deterioration, physical incapacity, mental illness, developmental disability, gambling, idleness, debauchery, excessive use of intoxicants or drugs.”Sally Hurme of the National Guardianship Association noted: “You could be found to be incapacitated in one state but not in another.”Who performs the psychological assessment?Ideally, a forensic psychiatrist or a psychologist with expertise in neuropsychological assessments. But some states just specify “physician.” Psychiatrists tend to place greater weight on diagnoses; psychologists emphasize tests that measure cognitive abilities. Each reviews medical records and interviews family, friends and others.Assessments can extend over several days. They range widely in depth and duration.Eric Freitag, who conducts neuropsychological assessments in the Bay Area, said he prefers interviewing people at home where they are often more at ease, and where he can evaluate the environment. He asks about financial literacy: bill-paying, health insurance, even counting out change.Assessing safety is key. Dr. Freitag will ask what the person would do if a fire broke out. “I’d call my daughter,” one of his subjects replied.Who chooses the evaluator?Ms. Spears has not been able to choose her evaluators in the past because the conservator has the power to make those decisions. However, if she moves to dissolve the conservatorship, she can select the evaluator, to help build her case. If the conservator, her father, opposes her petition and objects to her selection, he could nominate a candidate to perform an additional assessment. Ms. Spears would likely pick up both tabs as costs of the conservatorship.To avoid a bitter battle of experts and the appearance that an assessor hired by either camp would be inherently biased — plus the strain of two evaluations on Ms. Spears — the judge could try to get both sides to agree to an independent, court-appointed doctor.What impact does a mental health diagnosis have on an evaluation?Many states explicitly say that a diagnosis of a severe mental health disorder is not, on its own, evidence that a person should remain in conservatorship.Stuart Zimring, an attorney in Los Angeles County who specializes in elderlaw and special needs trusts, noted that he once represented a physician with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who was under a conservatorship. The doctor’s rights were eventually restored after he proved he was attending counseling sessions and taking medication.“It was a joyous day when the conservatorship was terminated,” said Mr. Zimring. “He got to practice medicine again, under supervision.”The association between the diagnosis of a severe mental disorder and a determination of incapacity troubles Dr. Swain, the Los Angeles psychologist.“Whatever they ended up diagnosing Britney Spears with, was it of such severity that she did not understand the decisions that she had to make, that she could not provide adequate self-care?” she asked. “Where do you draw that line? It’s a moving target.”Does the judge have to accept an evaluator’s findings?No, but judges usually do.What standard does a probate judge apply to reach a decision?In most states, when a judge approves a conservatorship, which constrains a person’s autonomy, the evidence has to be “clear and convincing,” a rigorous standard just below the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”But when a conservatee wants those rights restored, many experts believe the standard should be more lenient.Some states indeed apply a lower standard to end a conservatorship. In California, a judge can do so by finding it is more likely than not (“preponderance of evidence”) that the conservatee has capacity. But some states say that the evidence to earn a ticket out still has to be “clear and convincing.”Most states do not even set a standard.“There’s an underlying assumption that if you can get the process right, everything would be fine and we wouldn’t be depriving people of rights,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “Our take is that the process is fundamentally broken and that we shouldn’t be using guardianship in so many cases.”If someone is doing well, isn’t the conservatorship no longer necessary?Yes and no. “Judges are haunted by people they have had in front of them who have been released and disaster happens,” said Victoria Haneman, a trusts and estates law professor at Creighton University. “So they take a conservative approach to freedom.”Describing the Kafkaesque conundrum of conservatorship, Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a disabilities rights lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “If she’s doing great, the system is working and should continue. If she is making choices others disagree with, then she’s unreliable and she needs the system.”Or, as Kristin Booth Glen, a former New York State judge who oversaw such cases and now works to reform the system, put it, “Conservatorship and guardianship are like roach motels: you can check in but you can’t check out.”Can an evaluator recommend a less restrictive approach than a conservatorship?At times. Judge Glen once approved the termination of a guardianship of a young woman originally deemed to have the mental acuity of a 7-year-old. After three years of thoughtful interventions, the woman, since married and raising two children, had become able to participate fully in her life. She relied on a team for “supported decision making,” which Judge Glen called “a less restrictive alternate to the Draconian loss of liberty” of guardianship.A supported decision-making approach has been hailed by the Uniform Law Commission, which drafts model statutes. It has said judges should seek “the least restrictive alternative” to conservatorship.To date, only Washington and Maine have fully adopted the commission’s recommended model. More

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      in Theater

      Emerging From Covid, Small Theaters in Los Angeles Face a New Challenge

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      A state law threatens to drive up labor costs for the city’s hand-to-mouth small theater scene as it tries to emerge from the pandemic.LOS ANGELES — “And here she is, in all her glory.”With a clank of a switch, Gary Grossman, the artistic director of the Skylight Theater Company in Los Angeles, turned up the lights over the 99 seats of his shoe box of a theater in Los Feliz the other morning. The Skylight looked pretty much the way it did when it abruptly shut down in March of 2020. Planks of scenery from its last production, “West Adams,” were gathering dust, leaned up against the rear of the stage.Concert halls, arenas, movie houses, baseball stadiums and big theaters are reopening here and across the country as the pandemic begins to recede. But for many of the 325 small nonprofit theater companies scattered across Los Angeles, like the Skylight, that day is still months away, and their future is as uncertain as ever.“How long will it be until we get back to where we were?” Grossman asked, his voice echoing across the empty theater that was founded in 1983. “I think three to five years.”This network of intimate theaters, none bigger than 99 seats, is a vibrant subculture of experimentation and tradition in Los Angeles, often overlooked in the glitter of the film and television industry. But it is confronting two challenges as it tries to climb back after the lengthy shutdown: uncertainty as to when theatergoers will be ready to cram into small black boxes with poor ventilation, and a 2020 state law, initially intended to help gig workers such as Uber drivers, that stands to substantially drive up labor costs for many of these organizations.The new gig worker law mandates that all theaters, regardless of size, pay minimum wage — which is ramping up to $15 an hour in California — plus payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance. While some unionized theaters paid a minimum wage before, many had exemptions from Actors’ Equity which allowed them to pay stipends that typically ranged from $9 to $25 for each rehearsal or performance.Producers say the new state law means expenses for many small theaters will climb steeply at an exceptionally fragile moment for the industry.“Small performing arts organizations are on the verge of disappearing in California,” said Martha Demson, the board president of the Theatrical Producers League of Los Angeles. “It’s an existential crisis. We had the 15 months of Covid. But also now the California employment laws; to remain good employers we have to hire all of our employees as full-time employees.”Many organizations have survived these past months with government grants, support from donors and breaks from landlords. But Demson said some theaters that were forced to turn off the lights may never be able to return in this difficult environment.The Fountain Theater held outdoor performances of “An Octoroon.”Philip Cheung for The New York TimesIt has all added to an atmosphere of anxiety for a part of Los Angeles that has often felt a bit like a cultural stepchild. For all its growth and accolades, and its importance to actors looking for a place to work or stay sharp between roles in movies or on television, the theater scene has been too often overlooked. There is no central district of small theaters, as there is in many cities: They are scattered across North Hollywood, Atwater Village, Westwood, a stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, Culver City and downtown Los Angeles.“Reminding the public that intimate theater not only exists but is essential to a well-balanced life in L.A. has been a challenge for decades,” said Stephen Sachs, the co-artistic director of the Fountain Theater. “We are always up against the goliath of the film and television industry.”Danny Glover, an actor who began his career on small stages in Los Angeles and San Francisco and was a co-founder of the Robey Theater Company in Los Angeles, described the theater scene as central to his own success.“Something happened in those small places with 50 people in there that opened me up in different ways, that made me realize there was something I could say in front of a camera or in front of a stage,” Glover said in an interview. “I’ve seen actors in a small theater, whether it’s in San Francisco or L.A., the next thing they are on their way to a career. That doesn’t often happen with the kind of pressures that are there when you are in a theater for profit.”Intimate theaters operate hand-to-mouth. Only 19 of the 325 small theaters have budgets over $1 million, and those account for 83 percent of the combined revenue of the entire sector, according to the Theatrical Producers League.“We are always underfunded,” said Taylor Gilbert, the founder of the Road Theater Company. “Live theater is not the best of models for making money.”Many theaters operated on the margins even before the pandemic; now producers worry about when audiences will feel safe returning. With the highly contagious Delta variant spreading, Los Angeles County health authorities recently recommended that people resume wearing masks at indoor venues.Demson, the producing artistic director of the Open Fist Theater Company, estimated the new law, which took effect just before California shut down, would add $193,500 in labor costs to her company’s annual budget, which now varies between $200,000 and $250,000.Many industries have responded to the bill, known as AB5, by lobbying Sacramento for exemptions. But there is little support for that in this theater community, which tends to be politically progressive.“It puts another financial burden on already strapped small companies,” Gilbert said. “At the same time we all support the idea that an artist should get a living wage. That’s the conundrum.”Actors’ Equity has come out strongly against exempting its members from the law, instead pushing for financial assistance from state and federal government to help theaters get back on their feet.“We think it’s a bad idea to have an exemption,” said Gail Gabler, the western regional director of Actors’ Equity. “We all want the same thing, We want the theater to open. It’s important for our economy and it’s important for our souls and it’s important for the actors who work in theater. But we want our actors to be fairly paid and work in safe conditions.”As a result, theater leaders are pressing lawmakers in Sacramento for legislation that would provide aid to help theaters cover the explosion of costs. There are two main initiatives: A one-time $50 million subsidy included in the state budget for struggling small theaters, and another that would set up a state agency to handle the cost of processing the new payroll requirements.But some small theater operators say that those bills would not do enough.“The financial subsidies would be great if they were written as a long-term sustaining line item in the California state budget,” said Tim Robbins, the Academy Award-winning actor and artistic director of the Actors’ Gang, a small theater in Culver City. “The real question is what happens next year when there are no financial subsidies left and the new precedents for nonprofits has been established?”The Fountain transformed its parking lot into an outdoor theater.Philip Cheung for The New York Times“For me the essential question is how AB5 went from a bill meant to address the nonprotection of gig workers (Lyft and Uber, etc.) to a bill that is bullying nonprofit theater companies?” he asked in an email.Susan Rubio, the Democratic California senator who is sponsoring the bill to set up a state agency and pushing for the $50 million subsidy, argued her approach would help the industry survive these challenging times.“Many have concerns and will continue to have concerns,” she said in an interview. “But California prides itself in taking care of its workers.”Grossman said he is hopeful that the Skylight will begin live performances by the fall. But other theaters are not as optimistic.Jon Lawrence Rivera, the founding artistic director of Playwrights’ Arena, which only produces the work of Los Angeles writers, said he was resigned to a difficult few years. Before the crisis, the Arena would fill 90 percent of its 50 seats. “Now, I’m thinking 30 to 40 percent capacity at the most,” he said.Most ominously, he worries that emergency grants will dry up as things return to normal.“The resources that we have been able to accumulate will disappear within two or three shows,” he said.The pressure to open is intense. The Hollywood Bowl staged its first public shows at the beginning of July, and in August, “Hamilton” is coming back to the Pantages Theater, with 2,700 seats, in Hollywood.Some theaters took advantage of the California climate and headed outside. The Wallis Center for Performing Arts in Beverly Hills recently reopened with a show on a pop-up outdoor theater it built on a terrace — “Tevye in New York!”The Fountain Theater, which has 80 seats, transformed its parking lot into an outdoor theater, and opened last month with “An Octoroon.” Bright red bushes of blooming bougainvillea offered a lush wall on one side of the seating area as cars buzzed by on Fountain Avenue and the occasional helicopter rumbled overhead. “Mufflers!” grimaced Rob Nagle, one of the actors, without breaking out of character, as a particularly deafening motorcycle roared by.There seems to be a resignation that many small theaters will face a hard time. “We know once the smoke clears some of them won’t be reopening,” said Mitch O’Farrell, a member of the Los Angeles City Council whose district includes many of the theaters.But Grossman said for all the concern — and the likelihood that some theaters would not reopen — he was confident that in the end, this scrappy culture would survive. “We are like cockroaches,” he said. “You’re never going to get us. We are going to sustain. But it’s going to be tough.” More

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      in Movies

      William Smith, Action Star Known for His Onscreen Brawls, Dies at 88

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      In addition to his Hollywood legacy, the Missouri native was also a bodybuilder, a champion discus thrower and a published poet.William Smith, an actor known for his portrayals of villains and his onscreen movie brawls, died on Monday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 88.Mr. Smith’s wife, Joanne Cervelli Smith, said he died at the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Country House and Hospital. She did not specify the cause.While Mr. Smith was best known for his roles in action movies like “Any Which Way You Can” (1980), and television shows including “Laredo,” “Rich Man, Poor Man” and “Hawaii Five-O,” the real action came from his offscreen life.He was a polyglot, a bodybuilder, a champion discus thrower and an Air Force pilot during the Korean War, according to his website.Mr. Smith had more than 300 acting credits listed on IMDb from 1954 to 2020. He did many of his own stunts, and sometimes those scenes got heated. He was throwing punches with Rod Taylor for the 1970 film “Darker Than Amber” when the two began fighting each other for real. Both walked away with broken bones.“Now that was a good fight,” Mr. Smith recalled in a 2010 interview with BZ Film.The Columbia, Mo., native solidified his Hollywood status after tussling onscreen with actors like Clint Eastwood, Nick Nolte and Yul Brynner. In the 1980s, the 6-foot-2 actor earned roles in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders,” (1983) and in “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), for which he was cast as the father of Conan, who was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.His last role was in “Irresistible,” a 2020 film directed by Jon Stewart.In “Rich Man, Poor Man,” he played the dangerous and eccentric character Anthony Falconetti, which he would later reprise in a follow-up to the series, “Rich Man, Poor Man Book II.”Mr. Smith, who was born on March 24, 1933, grew up on a cattle ranch in Missouri owned by his parents, William Emmett Smith and Emily Richards Smith. At the ranch, he would develop a love and admiration for horses and the classic Western lifestyle, according to his website.His family later moved to Southern California, and Mr. Smith immediately began to seek work in films, finding jobs as a child performer and later as a studio extra.Ms. Smith said in a phone interview on Sunday that besides the tough guy roles that made her husband a star onscreen, he had a compassionate side as well. “He’s definitely tough as nails but he had the heart of a poet,” she said.In 2009, Mr. Smith published a book of poetry, “The Poetic Works of William Smith.”The place to find Mr. Smith, even as an older man, was the gym, Ms. Smith said. Young actors often would talk to him between workout sets, and he would share advice, sometimes inviting them to his home to discuss upcoming auditions.In addition to his wife, Mr. Smith is survived by his son, William E. Smith III, and his daughter, Sherri Anne Cervelli.Alyssa Lukpat contributed reporting. More

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      in Television

      Three Hollywood Stars Recast Their Lives Deep in the Heart of Texas

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      As the pandemic upended Tinseltown, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Haylie Duff and Becca Tobin made a pact to abandon Los Angeles and join the mass migration from California to Texas.During the blockbuster plot twist that was 2020, three Los Angeles-based actors and longtime friends wrote themselves a scene that was playing out in cities across the United States. Early into lockdown, Becca Tobin, best known for her role as Kitty Wilde on the Fox series “Glee,” formed a pandemic pod with her fellow actors Haylie Duff and Jamie-Lynn Sigler, gathering for regular backyard confabs about shifting priorities, family demands and their future in Hollywood.“We had been able to work from home successfully and set up our careers from anywhere,” Ms. Tobin said. “And we were all kind of ready for a change.”Ms. Tobin, 35, Ms. Duff, 36 and Ms. Sigler, 40, had all moved to Los Angeles in their 20s for work and, like so many others, spent much of 2020 wondering if they wanted to live somewhere else. Hollywood the town and Hollywood the job had been cleaved apart, with acting classes going online, self-tape auditions replacing in-person, and the offscreen demands of the job — red carpets, award shows, interviews — going virtual or extinct.“We found our conversations shifting more toward life,” said Ms. Sigler, who made her mark playing Meadow Soprano on “The Sopranos.” “And then we started to fantasize about what it would be like to live in different cities, and would we ever want to leave L. A.?”They were far from alone. For the first time in more than a century, California lost people last year, according to population estimates released by the state in May. Some of that was a result of Covid-19 deaths, falling birthrates and the Trump administration’s efforts to limit immigration. But for many, it was simply a matter of finding better prices in greener pastures.The three made a pact to relocate their “quaranteam,” leaving Hollywood together for a new city where they could keep working but enjoy a less hectic, and less expensive, life.“It reminded me of being in high school and being like, ‘You’re gonna go home tonight and shave your legs, right? Because I’m going to do it, too,’” Ms. Tobin said of the agreement. “Like adult peer pressure.”During the summer, Ms. Duff, the native Texan in the group, had visited her parents in Houston and felt the pull back home. The older sister of the actress Hilary Duff, she has been acting since she was a teenager and had always planned to move back to Texas eventually, and after the trip, she cut her family’s five-year plan to a five-month plan. As more friends relocated, there was “an energy around people choosing to make a change in their life, for a positive reason, for a self-care reason,” she said.The friends considered different cities they had heard of people moving to, like Nashville or Atlanta, but they kept coming back to Texas. “We liked the idea of being in a progressive city, but not necessarily something so overly populated,” Ms. Tobin said.The obvious choice was Austin, the booming southern crossroads of culture and technology, where they could more or less split the distance between Los Angeles and New York. It was a madcap move in the rush of a red-hot sellers market, a once-in-a-century chance to pause, then fast-forward.Austin’s housing market, already in a decade-long development frenzy, wound up defying the pandemic and roaring back to life. In May 2021, the median sale price in the Austin metro area hit an all-time high of $465,000.Stacy Sodolak for The New York Times“Even though we were together so much during quarantine and Covid, it really chipped away at us as a family, like many families,” said Ms. Sigler, who had only been to Austin once, for a film premiere at the South by Southwest festival. “Coming to this new city all together on this adventure offered a lot of repair for us, as well.”Ms. Tobin, a Georgia native who had lived in Los Angeles for 12 years, said of Tinseltown: “As easy as it was to come, it was as easy for me to say goodbye.”The three families made a common checklist, headlined by ample outdoor space and good public schools. They “hit the Zillow hard,” Ms. Sigler said, lobbing listings at one another from film sets and playgrounds. In October, they embarked on a house-hunting tour with partners and children in tow (Ms. Duff has two daughters; Ms. Sigler has two sons), and settled on a neighborhood about 20 minutes northwest of downtown Austin.When they arrived in the spring, the culture shock came by way of small-town hospitality and everyday conveniences. “You mean I can get in my car, drive five minutes and not fight people when I’m in the grocery store to get in a lot?” said Ms. Tobin, who arrived in April after filming a TV reboot of the 1989 film “Turner & Hooch” in Vancouver, British Columbia. “Oh, and you don’t pay for parking anywhere.”In decamping to Austin — home to an ever-expanding ecosystem of film festivals and production studios — they were joining a wave of high-profile Californians like Tesla founder Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan, as well as the other roughly 70,000 people who moved to the area last year, according to U.S. census data, making it the fastest-growing metro area in the United States.“Once you come here, it’s hard to leave,” said Ms. Duff, whose film roles include “Napoleon Dynamite” and “The Wedding Pact,” and who spent time this year shooting a movie in Fort Wayne, Ind. She noted that each of the friends booked gigs not long after closing on their Austin homes, which felt like a nod from the universe.“I almost feel more connected to my craft and why I love acting,” said Ms. Sigler, who had just returned from recording dialogue at a studio in downtown Austin for an ABC pilot she shot in Los Angeles. “When the calls come in, it’s a beautiful surprise. I’m still on things and I’m still a businesswoman and it’s still my career, but I don’t feel the pressure around it because we took a stand for ourselves and we made decisions for our families.”With its bohemian charms, natural splendors and lack of state income taxes, Austin has been courting California’s twin economic engines, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, for years, all while trying to maintain its cherished “Keep Austin Weird” credibility. According to Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, about 90,000 Californians moved to Texas in 2018 and 2019. The pandemic has only deepened the romance. Austin enjoyed a P.R. blitz of high-profile corporate relocations and expansions last year, with tech giant Oracle moving its headquarters there from Redwood Shores, Calif., and Mr. Musk announcing Tesla’s $1 billion “gigafactory” on the southeast edge of town.The housing market, already in a decade-long development frenzy, wound up defying the pandemic and roaring back to life. In May 2021, the median sale price in the Austin metro area hit an all-time high of $465,000, according to the Austin Board of Realtors. High-end home prices spiked 24 percent, according to Redfin, the most of any area in the country.Still, anyone used to California prices sees Texas as a bargain, said Scott Michaels, an Austin real estate agent with Compass, who described cutthroat, all-cash bidding wars that drew 40 to 60 offers on a single property. “It’s a challenge because we’re competing with people moving from out-of-state, and there’s just not a lot of inventory on the market,” he said.For Ms. Sigler, who is from Long Island, Austin’s square footage and outdoor space were revelatory. “There was a lot of like, ‘Oh my God, look what we can get for this. Look at the life we can give ourselves,’ you know, compared to what we’re able to afford here in L.A.,” she said. “I just feel like we’re taking a big, deep breath since we got here.”Apartment towers sprout on the shores of Lady Bird Lake, luring workers in entertainment, tech and other high-profile industries from cities across the U.S. “It’s an incredible burst of prosperity for the city, but it’s also just terrifying from a housing affordability standpoint, what that means for people living here,” said Jake Weggman, an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of Texas at Austin.Stacy Sodolak for The New York TimesMs. Sigler and Ms. Duff started their careers as teens but wanted a different lifestyle for their children in Austin, where space and nature are plentiful, and paparazzi aren’t. “That was a big choice for us, wanting our kids to stay young,” Ms. Duff said.Austin has been contending with growing pains since the early 1980s, during its first hint of what locals call Silicon Hills, said Natasha Harper-Madison, the city’s Mayor Pro-Tem. Born and raised in East Austin, Ms. Harper-Madison said the changing cityscape was best described by her mother: “She said, ‘I really like my neighbors. I just wish I didn’t have to lose so many of the old ones to get new ones.’ And I think, in large part, that’s how folks feel. It’s not any sort of absence of the desire to welcome people to our communities. It’s the exact opposite. In fact, people want to preserve and sort of steward the evolution of their communities.”Despite some natal cries of “Don’t California My Texas” from both ends of the political spectrum, what’s fueling the migration are the states’ similarities. Sitting on the border with relatively sunny climates, “they’re both super diverse, in every possible way — ethnically, economically, geographically,” said Jake Weggman, an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of Texas at Austin.“It’s an incredible burst of prosperity for the city, but it’s also just terrifying from a housing affordability standpoint, what that means for people living here,” Mr. Weggman said.Ms. Tobin has sensed some side-eye when she tells locals where she’s from, but she tries to put them at ease. Voting and donating are two ways to do it, she said, and she has contributed to causes that support homeless outreach and abortion rights through local nonprofits like Mobile Loaves & Fishes and the Lilith Fund.“I get it, they don’t want us to L.A. their Austin,” she said. “My husband and I personally are going to really try to do our best to help out in the community and get involved where we can.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      Shopping Cart Theory, and Practice

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      An essential tool. An inspiration for artists. A public nuisance. The humble shopping cart has been all of these in the decades since it was invented. But what does it reveal about our character?The next time you go to the grocery store, consider the ordinary shopping cart as something more than a rattling basket blocking your parking space.In the 1930s, an American grocer named Sylvan Goldman invented the precursor to the modern day shopping cart, using a folding frame that was fixed on a set of wheels. He hoped that people would buy more groceries if they did not have to carry heavy baskets as they browsed.And they did.But over the decades, the shopping cart has evolved from its mundane existence as the centerpiece of every grocery store run.Like the Campbell’s Soup can, it has become an unlikely icon in a subculture that celebrates the common object.Shopping carts have been the focus of books and films, and their use examined in magazine columns and classrooms as tools to explain how humans behave in public. They have found a dubious niche on the internet as the stars of a YouTube show, followed by half a million people. They have even inspired musicians: The steady clacking of a cart rolling down a street was the inspiration for both the sound and the words in Neil Young’s 1994 song “Safeway Cart.”They are also a nuisance. Legislators and store owners across the United States have struggled with how to prevent the carts from being stolen, left in handicapped parking spots, discarded on sidewalks, abandoned at bus stops or tipped into creeks.Shirley Yu for The New York TimesAn Enduring Cultural ArtifactIn 2005, a cart infiltrated the British Museum, when the artist Banksy paired one with a cave man on a piece of fake prehistoric rock art — and then secretly installed the rock in a gallery, unnoticed for days.Another Banksy creation, the painting “Show Me the Monet,” incorporated discarded carts in nature. It sold at auction for about $10 million in December.John H. Lienhard, a history of technology professor at the University of Houston, described shopping carts as a “flash of genius” that altered American life during an episode of his public radio show, “The Engines of Our Ingenuity.”Decades after that 1995 broadcast, Dr. Lienhard is still trying to explain how the utilitarian origins of shopping carts broadened into cultural appeal.“They mirror us,” he said in an interview. “We want to walk. We want to carry. And now we aid our walking and carrying. And then our walking and carrying becomes mentally associated with wheeling.”“That means the technology of the commonplace is terribly important,” he said.Far From the SupermarketThe 2009 film “Cart” illustrates what Dr. Lienhard called the “symbiotic relationship” of humans and shopping carts.In the film, a shopping cart is given a mind of its own, navigating the perils of city streets as it searches for a boy who has left his jacket in the basket. The cart then saves the boy’s life by blocking an oncoming car.Jesse Rosten, the director, said the idea arose when he and a friend spotted an overturned cart in a parking lot. A sad song was on the radio as they drove past it, adding to the potential for cinematic melancholy.“We laughed the whole way home, imagining back stories for this down-and-out cart who was struggling against the world,” he said. “We’ve all seen abandoned shopping carts out in the world, and the film is one take on how carts end up where they do.”Portraits of carts in the wild are also captured in the 2006 book “The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.”The Buffalo artist behind the book, Julian Montague, spent seven years photographing carts in dumpsters, in alleys, on lawns, wherever they turned up. “It is a weird object,” he said.“Somebody can take it someplace and chop the wheels off, or take laundry to the basement,” he said. “Unlike a plastic bag, it has multiple lives.”Shirley Yu for The New York TimesCarts as a Test of CharacterSome people steal them. Others leave them wherever they like.Private companies have gotten creative. In California, stray carts are reported on hotlines to companies that specialize in repatriating them to their store lots.At the supermarket chain ALDI, shoppers unlock carts with a quarter, which is returned when the carts are. Some customers leave the quarter in the cart for the next person to use.“We’re always amazed at the ‘pay-it-forward’ spirit that happens in our parking lots,” said Kate Kirkpatrick, communications director at ALDI. “As a result, we rarely run into issues with carts not being returned.”On many days, Seth Sanders, 20, a clerk at Safeway in Bellingham, Wash., can be found dodging cars as he rounds up carts that people have left in parking spaces or shoved aside in the massive lot.About a quarter of customers do not bother to return their carts, he estimated, which means he spends a lot of time doing it for them, in between bagging groceries, cleaning and finding items for customers.Mr. Sanders has wrangled carts in the cold, in the rain, and in the smoke from wildfires. One customer, in a hurry, shoved a cart in his direction with such force that it hurt his leg.“I want to say it is almost kind of selfish,” he said. “It is kind of a test of character. It is our job to pick up after people, but if it is the smallest thing you can do to help out, I feel like it is not a lot to help out a little bit.”Shirley Yu for The New York TimesEnter the Vigilantes …Of course, shopping cart slackers have their reasons.In a 2017 column in Scientific American, the anthropologist Krystal D’Costa explored why people failed to return carts. It “hit a nerve,” she wrote in a follow-up.In more than 2,000 comments on the magazine’s Facebook page, some said they were afraid to leave children unattended, or struggled with a disability, or feared making someone’s job obsolete. Within the past year, the so-called Shopping Cart Theory has become an article of faith on Reddit and other social media sites. The theory posits that the decision to return a cart is the ultimate test of moral character and a person’s capacity to be self-governing.It is a theory fully embraced by the video vigilantes known as The Cart Narcs, self-appointed enforcers who confront shoppers trying to leave without returning their carts. The series has about 500,000 followers on Facebook and YouTube.The Shopping Cart Theory has even reached academia — if middle school counts as academia. Students at the Lausanne Collegiate School in Tennessee were recently asked by Greg Graber, the school’s director of social and emotional learning, to analyze it in a class on critical thinking.One student said anyone who noticed a wayward cart should just return it. Another warned against rushing to judgment. Mr. Graber agreed.“It seems to be a popular belief now that people who leave their shopping carts in places are lacking in values and morals,” he said. But that belief “does not allow for growth or grace.”… and Here Come the LegislatorsIn April, the Shopping Cart Theory was cited in coverage of a proposed state law that would fine shoppers who did not return their carts.Paul Aronsohn, a disability ombudsman for New Jersey, had approached State Senator Kristin Corrado with the idea. He said the state needed to deter shoppers who abandon carts in the wide spaces designated for people with disabilities.Senator Corrado introduced Senate Bill No. 3705, which would impose a fine of $250 for doing so.“Apparently it is a pet peeve to a lot of people,” she said.One person who would benefit is Kelly Boyd, 41, of Hamilton Township, N.J., who has used a wheelchair since she was 9. When she drives her van to the store and lowers a ramp to disembark in her motorized chair, she often finds a cart blocking her way.So Ms. Boyd said she has to nudge it out of the way with her van, or drive to a remote part of the lot where she can use two spaces to get out. That has led to angry notes left on her car and confrontations with other drivers.“Everything I do as a person with a disability takes longer and then to have to deal with that is more frustrating,” Ms. Boyd said. “It is surprising how some people do not care.”This is not the only state legislation tackling shopping cart nuisances. Some places, like Los Angeles and Clark County, Nev., require wheels that lock when a cart is taken far from a store. Some cities in Washington impose fines on stores for wayward carts, and other cities are taking note.Last year the board of supervisors in Fairfax County, Va., met to address “the visual clutter” of stray carts with a proposal to impose $500 fines on people who wheel them off store property.“It is a real problem,” Jeffrey C. McKay told his fellow supervisors during the session. But others on the board argued that it would penalize people who are struggling economically and use the carts to get food home or carry their belongings.One of the supervisors, Dalia A. Palchik, said that had been her childhood experience.As immigrants from Argentina in 1989, Ms. Palchik said, she and her three siblings often accompanied their mother to the store and then pushed the cart to their rental house on the edge of Fairfax City. They had no car available.The memory came flooding back during the discussion. “It was one of those things I was ashamed of as a kid,” she said in an interview. “Why are we criminalizing people trying to get to the grocery store?”The ordinance is still under consideration. More

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      How One Graphic Novel Looks at Anti-Asian Hate

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      In “Cyclopedia Exotica,” the artist and writer Aminder Dhaliwal created a fictitious community facing xenophobia, fetishization and media misrepresentation. It’s resonating with her thousands of Instagram followers.In the new graphic novel “Cyclopedia Exotica,” immigrants with one eye coexist uneasily with their two-eyed neighbors.Members of the cyclops community are targeted by curious online daters and porn addicts, as well as cosmetic surgeons eager to give them that desirable two-eyed look. They contend with xenophobes protesting mixed marriages, hateful comments from subway Karens and, in some cases, physical violence.In 2018, when the artist and author Aminder Dhaliwal began sharing pages with her nearly 250,000 Instagram followers, she was drawing from her experiences as a South Asian woman growing up in England and Canada, but she wondered if the topic was relevant.“I remember saying to a friend, I want to do a book on microaggressions, but that’s, like, so old. Is it even worth doing?” she said in a phone interview from Burbank, Calif., where she now lives.Three years on, Dhaliwal’s book seems particularly of the moment. It’s tough to miss the parallels between its characters, minorities singled out because of their eyes, and the spate of reported attacks on Asian people in the United States over the past months. “I could not imagine that this would be happening this year,” she said.The graphic novel begins with the story of Etna, the world’s first cyclops sex symbol. Her critically acclaimed 2018 debut, “Woman World,” imagined an idyllic, supremely chill future in which guys went extinct years ago. (Spoiler alert: They aren’t really missed.) Published by the Canadian comics house Drawn & Quarterly this month, “Cyclopedia Exotica” is her second book and has already connected with a diverse readership.“A lot of the microaggression stuff was specifically about Asians,” Dhaliwal, 32, said. “But I also get questions like, ‘Is this about queer people?’ Or, ‘I relate to this so much as a trans person.’”Born in Wembley, London, she moved when she was 11 to Brampton, Ontario, a predominantly South Asian suburb of Toronto. She loved to draw from an early age, tracing the covers of her brother’s video game cases and creating Harry Potter fan art. She knew she wanted to do something art-related but wasn’t sure what she could do or whom to even ask. “Being an Asian kid, I feel like my family had access to every doctor,” she said. “But I didn’t know anyone doing art.”Inspired by a presentation at Sheridan College given by a Disney “Beauty and the Beast” animator, Dhaliwal enrolled in the school’s animation department. “He was this larger guy with a big old beard, and he flips a switch and he’s Belle,” she said. “It was just bananas to me. I knew at that moment that I wanted to dedicate my life to this craft, because it just seemed so fun and silly.”After graduation, Dhaliwal found work in Los Angeles as a writer and artist on animated shows like “The Fairly OddParents” and “Sanjay and Craig.” The work was rewarding — in 2020, she earned a spot on Variety’s list of “Ten Animators to Watch” — but the secrecy and nondisclosure agreements involved wore her down. “So much of my day-to-day is hidden behind N.D.A.’s,” she said. “You get exhausted not getting to talk about the cool things you’re working on or getting to process the hard things you’re going through.”Aminder Dhaliwal began sharing pages on Instagram in 2018. “I remember saying to a friend, I want to do a book on microaggressions, but that’s, like, so old,” she said. “Is it even worth doing?”Joyce Kim for The New York TimesAfter working for four years on a pilot for an animated series that never got greenlit, she knew she had to create her own comics, things she could post online for immediate feedback. She started with a Harry Potter spoof, then a tongue-in-cheek comic based on the Japanese manga series “Death Note.”“Woman World” came to Dhaliwal after she participated in the 2017 Women’s March in Los Angeles and saw signs that read “the future is female.” What might that look like, she wondered? As with “Cyclopedia Exotica,” she questioned her idea early on. “I remember starting to write it and thinking like, ehhh, feminism is doing great,” she said. “And then the #MeToo movement happened, and I was like, oh yeah.”The animation industry had its own reckoning in 2018, dubbed the #MeToon movement. Dhaliwal and her fellow animator Megan Nicole Dong (“Pinky Malinky,” “How to Train Your Dragon 2”) joined others in creating an organization that led to changes in human-resources practices at several studios and the one-year suspension of the “Loud House” creator Chris Savino following sexual harassment allegations. “Initially, we were just trying to create a safe space to talk about things that had been happening in animation,” Dong said. “But it evolved into a much bigger movement within our industry.”The success of “Woman World” gave Dhaliwal new confidence. “I had been working as a comedy writer for years and didn’t know if I was funny,” she said. “I remember asking one of my office mates, ‘Am I funny?,’ which now seems like such a sad question. It’s like a teenager asking a friend, ‘Am I pretty?’ I didn’t realize how much I needed someone else to say yes, you’re funny.”Unlike “Woman World,” the inspiration for “Cyclopedia Exotica” didn’t come from a march or movement. “I wish I could tell you there was some really beautiful reason,” Dhaliwal said. “But truly, I just found cyclops so interesting. So often they just look like people, except for their one defining feature. The first thing I remember sketching were pinup drawings of cyclops, and it went from monsters in erotica to looking at how minorities find acceptance through being attractive.”Dhaliwal is among several artists who have showcased and serialized their work on Instagram, including Lucy Knisley (“Kid Gloves”), Shelby Lorman (“Awards for Good Boys”), and Liana Finck (“Passing for Human”). Like Dhaliwal, many use social-media platforms to show their work, describe their creative processes and discuss everything from depression to writer’s block.“Cyclopedia Exotica” begins with the story of Etna, the world’s first cyclops sex symbol. Later, other cyclops deal with being perceived as overly submissive, the lack of cyclops representation in Hollywood movies, and worries about whether mixed children will have one eye or two.“Aminder has always been so observant about everything,” Dong said. “She’s also friends with so many people, and so many different kinds of people, that all of these things in her book feel very authentic, because they’re either based on things she’s experienced or things her family and friends have gone through.”One cyclops goes to a cosmetic surgeon to get two eyes — a nod, Dhaliwal said, to double-eyelid surgeries targeted at Asians. The character’s surgery doesn’t take. “People die for beauty, because they feel they don’t look a certain way,” she said. “But so often people trivialize beauty, and say things like, you need to get over it, or you need to be OK with yourself.”“That’s the message animation shows always try to tell kids,” she continued. “Be true to yourself. But I think that can be really hard to swallow when the world has punished you so often for being who you are.”In many ways, the current climate of anti-Asian hate feels familiar to Dhaliwal. “I remember after 9/11, and for the next 10 or 15 years, it just sucked having brown skin. It seemed like every offhand joke was about being a terrorist. And then you get this odd experience where you’re like, finally, the Eye of Sauron turns to another group, and your first reaction is like, phew, we’re out of it, the eye’s not on us anymore! When instead, we should be thinking: No one should ever feel like this.”Dhaliwal is working on a new comic series that she hopes to begin posting on Instagram this month. She’s also written for the upcoming Netflix animated series “Centaurworld,” created by Dong, and was recently selected to serve as a mentor and consultant on the Creative Council of Cartoon Network’s shorts program, “Cartoon Cartoons,” which will showcase the work of diverse and up-and-coming animators.While Dhaliwal probably won’t be telling her mentees to just be true to themselves, she will be able to share what it means to be a working animator in an industry that’s gotten more inclusive but still has a ways to go. “I’m going to get to give creative feedback to all these people who are trying to make something and do something really creative,” she said. “It’s exciting to be in this position, because I’ve been in their position so often.”Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. More

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      Marilyn Manson Accused of Sexual Assault in Suit Filed by Esmé Bianco

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      The lawsuit also accuses Manson’s former manager, Tony Ciulla, of violating trafficking laws.Esmé Bianco, an actress known for her work on “Game of Thrones,” filed a lawsuit Friday in which she accused the singer Marilyn Manson of sexual assault and sexual battery and described a series of violent incidents when they lived together in 2011.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, said that Marilyn Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, had used “fraudulent offers of movie and music video roles to convince Ms. Bianco to travel to Los Angeles, whereupon Mr. Warner then made threats of force and performed violent sexual acts on Ms. Bianco to which she did not consent.”The suit also named Mr. Manson’s longtime manager, Tony Ciulla, and his management company, accusing Mr. Manson and Mr. Ciulla of violating trafficking laws.Ms. Bianco flew to Los Angeles in 2009 for a video shoot that, the lawsuit said, turned into a multiday assault during which she was whipped and suffered electric shocks. The footage was never released, the suit said. She and Mr. Manson later began a consensual relationship, it said, and in 2011 he convinced Ms. Bianco, who is British, to live with him in Los Angeles “while he helped her secure a visa and launch her career in the United States.” During that time, the lawsuit said, she endured “constant abuse” at his hands, and he raped her.A lawyer for Mr. Manson, Howard King, called the claims against him “provably false” and said they were “based on conduct that simply never occurred.” In a statement, he accused Ms. Bianco and her lawyer of a shakedown attempt. “We will vigorously contest these allegations in court and are confident that we will prevail,” he said in the statement.The lawsuit comes almost three months after Mr. Manson was accused by another ex, the actress Evan Rachel Wood, of domestic abuse, rape and assault.After Ms. Wood, the Emmy-nominated star of “Westworld,” detailed her experiences on Instagram, and more people came forward with similar accusations against Mr. Manson — including Ms. Bianco — he was dropped by his record label and agents, cut from various TV guest roles and eventually jettisoned by Mr. Ciulla, who had represented him for 25 years.Mr. Ciulla is also known for representing acts including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and First Aid Kit. In a statement, Edwin F. McPherson, a lawyer for Ciulla Management, said that naming the company in the lawsuit “is not only legally meritless but also offensive and absurd. We look forward to formally contesting these completely frivolous allegations.”The actress Esmé Bianco said in a lawsuit that she was sexually assaulted by Marilyn Manson after he lured her to live with him with “fraudulent offers of movie and music video roles.”Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse, via Getty ImagesIn February, when Ms. Wood, a longtime advocate for survivors of sexual and domestic abuse, named Mr. Manson as her abuser, he denied her claims broadly in an Instagram post: “Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality,” he wrote. “My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how — and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”The Special Victims Bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office began investigating the domestic violence allegations against Mr. Manson in February, it said in a statement.Ms. Bianco, who played Ros on “Game of Thrones,” was promised a starring role in a film Mr. Manson said he was making when she moved from London to Los Angeles in 2011 to be with him, the suit said. Instead, the suit said, he began to control her movements, kept her awake for days at a time, forbade her from receiving visitors at his home and threatened to interfere with her visa process. She eventually escaped, the suit said, while he was sleeping.Mr. Ciulla and others around Mr. Manson knew of or witnessed his abuse of Ms. Bianco, according to the lawsuit, which called them “complicit” in the conduct: “Mr. Warner’s management had a vested interest in supporting his violent tendencies to encourage the creation of his ‘art’ and the promotion of the brand of Marilyn Manson.”Ms. Bianco said the relationship left her with post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks, and disrupted her career. Like Ms. Wood, she has become an advocate for survivors. Both women helped sponsor the Phoenix Act, California legislation which took effect last year. It lengthens the statute of limitations for domestic abuse felonies to five years, and expands training for officers working on domestic violence cases.In a statement, Ms. Bianco said that, even as she worked to amend the legal system on behalf of survivors, “I am also pursuing my right to demand my abuser be held to account, using every avenue available to me.”“For far too long my abuser has been left unchecked, enabled by money, fame and an industry that turned a blind eye,” Ms. Bianco said in the statement. Her hope, she added, is that by coming forward, “I will help to stop Brian Warner from shattering any more lives and empower other victims to seek their own small measure of justice.” More