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      in Theater

      Edinburgh Fringe: Out and About at the Festival

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      It’s summer in Edinburgh and visitors from around the world have arrived for the 77th edition of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the chaotic, scrappy, sprawling arts event that opened Friday and runs through Aug. 26. This year, there are more than 3,600 shows on the program, by artists from 58 countries: theater, stand-up, circus and cabaret performances, as usual — but also film screenings, whiskey tastings and a life drawing class with dogs.Robert Ormerod, a photographer for The New York Times, was on the ground in Edinburgh to capture the atmosphere on the festival’s first weekend.Festival-goers crowd the pubs and restaurants in the Old Town district of the city.Poster and flyers — as well as performers hustling in the streets — help the public choose from the more than 3,600 shows.Fringe performers line up for a media event over the weekend.Spectators for a street performance on the Royal Mile, Old Town’s main thoroughfare.Tartan Heather, a Scottish artist who weaves fabric in the traditional pattern for spectators, on the Royal Mile.Handbills for Fringe shows cover a phone booth in the city center.Checking times and venues at the Underbelly box office in George Square, central Edinburgh.Nina Conti, a British ventriloquist who has been appearing at the Fringe for over 20 years, presents her show “Whose Face Is It Anyway?” at the Pleasance Grand.A performer from “I Wish You Well: The Gwyneth Paltrow Ski-Trial Musical,” performs an impromptu song on Friday after a power cut canceled the show.Julia VanderVeen in “My Grandmother’s Eyepatch.”The Fringe sold nearly 2.5 million tickets in 2023.The performers on the official Fringe program were joined by nearly 500 street performers in 2023, according to Fringe.Relaxing in Princes Street Gardens, a stone’s throw from the hubbub of the festival. More

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      in Television

      Joe Rogan Plays Dumb in His Netflix Special

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      On his podcast, Rogan indulges his own obsessions and eccentricities. But in “Burn the Boats,” his Netflix comedy special, contempt for the crowd is a theme.On Saturday night, Joe Rogan started glitching.Minutes into his live comedy special “Burn the Boats,” the movements of his mouth did not match what he was saying. Audio went in and out. Certain phrases repeated, Max Headroom-style. Someone as conspiracy-minded as Rogan might wonder: Was this payback for his criticism of vaccines and lockdowns? Is the mainstream media behind this? Aliens?More likely, just boring old technical difficulties. Livestreaming remains a work in progress for Netflix. Following stand-up hours by Chris Rock and Katt Williams, Rogan became the third comic to try this experiment, putting out his first special in six years. You could see the logic of getting him to do it during election season but oddly, he didn’t address the latest developments in the presidential campaign. Rogan made more news last week on his podcast, where he suggested that the assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump has been “memory holed” and that Kamala Harris could win. He also suggested that the reason President Biden sometimes seems more coherent is that he uses a body double.Part of the reason that Rogan has built the most popular podcast in the world is that he promises to explore ideas that he says the mainstream media ignores or downplays. Was the Moon landing faked? Are aliens landing in Roswell the reason we invented fiber optics? Does wearing a mask make you seem like less of a man? Joe is on it.And yet, there is one question you don’t hear investigated on his podcast, one relevant to his success but taboo in certain precincts of the comedy world: Is Joe Rogan good at standup comedy?That can be a dangerous one for some comics to touch on because Rogan has become a powerful gatekeeper, the owner of a club in Austin, Texas, and a host who drives viewers to specials and movies. Rogan tends to be talked about as a political or sports figure, a guru for bros, a symptom of a culture rampant with conspiracy, transphobia and misinformation. But his current notoriety is all built on a decades-long career of standup, which provides a contrast with his other media job.Whereas he performs patient thoughtfulness in his podcasts, his standup is frantic, animated, full of unmodulated yelling. His eyes pop out and his face reddens. Midway through “Burn the Boats,” a jagged line of perspiration forms on his tight yellow shirt, making him look like Charlie Brown on steroids. Even if it seems too hammy for a close-up, there’s a cartoonish aspect to his persona that tells you to not take him seriously.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 Movies

      ‘The Interview’: Vince Vaughn Turned This Interview Into Self-Help

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      The Vince Vaughn who lives in my head is one of my favorite comedic actors. He’s the swaggering, charmingly sarcastic and cheerily ingratiating star of that great run of hit comedies from the early 2000s: “Old School,” “Dodgeball,” “Wedding Crashers,” “The Break-Up.” (His cameo in “Anchorman” and recurring role as Freddy Funkhouser on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” are also prime comedic Vaughniana.) And putting my own preferences aside, I’d argue that there’s a whole microgeneration of dudes who tried to swipe the neo-Rat Pack vibes that Vaughn was able to deploy so winningly in “Swingers.”Listen to the Conversation With Vince VaughnI went in expecting a swaggering, overconfident guy. I found something much more interesting.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | NYT Audio AppIn more recent years, though, after the often R-rated, kind of bro-y comedies with which Vaughn made his mark lost some of their cultural mojo, he has focused more on dramatic roles: the highly anticipated, widely maligned and then critically reconsidered second season of “True Detective,” for example, or his performances in the brutally uncompromising crime films of the director S. Craig Zahler (“Brawl in Cell Block 99,” “Dragged Across Concrete”).But as good as Vaughn can be with darker characters, I never connected those parts to the man who played them. Ahead of our interview, I made the perhaps-common journalist’s mistake of expecting to talk with someone akin to the playfully glib guy from those comedies I love. (That’s in no small part thanks to how Vaughn’s role as a world-weary, wiseass former detective in the new Apple TV+ series “Bad Monkey” scans as a mature update of his comedic persona.) But what I was expecting from Vaughn wasn’t what I got. Instead, I found someone more provocative and earnest, who came most alive when he put me under the conversational microscope. Which is to say, I got a surprise.Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with R-rated comedies anymore. Why do you think they’ve become harder to crack? When you talk about the R comedies in Hollywood, I feel like there’s a set of rules that the executives follow. The goal is not to get fired — they can defend why they greenlit something. The R comedies that took off was the studio saying to young people that were funny, “Go ahead.” They didn’t micromanage. We were on the sets changing lines and trying to make each other laugh. It’s not done as well by committee. They started managing everything too much and trying to control it all.Vince Vaughn with John Favreau in “Swingers” (1996).Miramax Films, via Everett Collection More

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      in Television

      Erica Ash of ‘Mad TV’ and ‘Survivor’s Remorse’ Dies at 46

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      Erica Ash started out on sketch comedy shows in the 2000s before appearing in movies like “Scary Movie V” and the satirical reality show “Real Husbands of Hollywood.”Erica Ash, an actress and comedian known for her roles in the satirical reality show “Real Husbands of Hollywood” and on the sketch comedy show “Mad TV,” died on Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 46.The cause was cancer, her mother, Diann Ash, said in a statement on Monday.Ms. Ash began her career in the 2000s as a cast member on the sketch comedy shows “The Big Gay Sketch Show” and “Mad TV,” where she impersonated celebrities like Michelle Obama and Condoleezza Rice.She went on to appear in several dozen TV shows and films, including “Scary Movie V.” She landed a recurring role on BET’s “The Real Husbands of Hollywood,” a parody of reality TV shows that starred Kevin Hart.On Starz’s “Survivor’s Remorse,” a drama-comedy about a young basketball star’s rise to fame, she played the main character’s sister. Among her last projects, Ms. Ash appeared in the Netflix horror-comedy film, “We Have a Ghost.”Erica Chantal Ash was born on Sept. 19, 1977, in Florida, according to IMDb. She attended Emory University as a pre-medicine student, but pivoted to comedy and entertainment. In an interview in 2018 with Steve Harvey, she talked about taking a year off from studying medicine and becoming a backup singer for a Japanese band.She was popular on social media, where she spoke out on politics and posted videos of herself portraying funny characters.A list of survivors was not immediately available. More

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      in Movies

      Know What’s Funny About Getting Old? These Movies Do.

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      Star-studded with leading ladies, who are all a bit older, recent comedies like “The Fabulous Four” and “80 for Brady” are establishing a popular new genre.There are two new films this year in which Academy Award-nominated actresses in their 70s whip out tiny sex toys. In “Summer Camp,” Kathy Bates offers up wee vibrators to Alfre Woodard and Diane Keaton. In “The Fabulous Four,” it’s Bette Midler giving Susan Sarandon a kegel ball that she later flings at a bike thief.You might confuse these comedies with “Book Club” (2018), where Keaton, again, finds herself in the company of fellow older luminaries (Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen and Candice Bergen). Or with “Poms” (2019), which places Keaton on a retirement community cheer squad with Jacki Weaver, Rhea Perlman and Pam Grier. Then, again, there’s also “80 for Brady” (2023), where Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sally Field and Rita Moreno go to the Super Bowl.From left: Kathy Bates, Diane Keaton and Alfre Woodard in “Summer Camp,” directed by Castille Landon. “It’s important that we see people having fun,” Landon said.Roadside AttractionsThough the circumstances are different, the similarities in plot, casting and themes make the films easy to classify but tough to label. “Legendary ladies of cinema do a light romp,” is a little long; “Old lady comedies” might seem demeaning, but that is, essentially, how the films identify themselves. In the “80 for Brady” trailer, Moreno sums it up by saying: “The Super Bowl is no place for four old women.”Regardless of the label, this growing genre of star-studded comedies has become popular in recent years, with “Four,” which hit theaters on Friday, becoming the latest installment in the canon.You can usually see the same types of characters in each film. At least one of the women is a stick in the mud. In “The Fabulous Four” that’s Sarandon’s job. As Lou, she’s a serious doctor who loves cats and is holding a grudge against Midler’s character over a long-ago offense. Often Keaton, with her turtlenecks, is the most uptight of her group. And Fonda, when she appears, plays sexually adventurous characters, prone to making off-color jokes. Megan Mullally has that gig in “Four,” with an assist from the famously bawdy Midler. There are usually high jinks involving behavior that one might not expect from seniors. They get high. They go on adventurous excursions like parasailing or ziplining. They experiment with technology and social media. (“The Fabulous Four” has a whole bit about Midler on TikTok.)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 Movies

      If A.I. Is Coming for Comedy Writers, Simon Rich Is Ready

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      The author of humorous short stories finds emotional connections in tales that engage with tech. But he’s more interested in the ties between humans.The author Simon Rich believes it’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence will be able to outwrite any human. Specifically, four years. So, what’s the twist?That’s what you wait for in a Simon Rich story, one of pop culture’s most consistently funny genres, with a foundation built like a classic joke: a tight premise developed in clear language, some misdirection, and then a pivot, delivered as quickly as possible.Rich, whose 10th collection of short stories, “Glory Days,” was released this week, said his dark view of the future was informed by a longtime friendship with an A.I. scientist, who recently showed him a chatbot the public hasn’t seen. It’s more raw, unpredictable, creative.“Even though I don’t know anything about A.I. really, I’ve been processing it emotionally for several years longer than everyone,” he told me in his Los Angeles home office one afternoon in May.He considered the implications of artificial intelligence displacing human creativity in “I Am Code,” a book he helped edit last year that featured A.I.-crafted poetry. The theme is also deeply woven into his new collection, his most mature effort yet, which includes some regular obsessions like “Back to the Future”-style encounters between generations, dystopia and the inner life of video game characters.“The whole book is basically about different types of obsolescence,” he said of “Glory Days,” whose other organizing theme is early midlife crisis. There’s a story about Super Mario turning 40 (Rich just did, too) and a spiky rant from the perspective of New York City itself. It’s about “the great migration when an entire generation discovers they are too old to live in New York,” 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

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      in Television

      Bob Newhart Stayed Funny His Entire Life

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      He basically invented the stand-up special in 1960 and continued to be a source of comic brilliance until his final years.Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy.Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.Onstage, he didn’t curse, bust taboos or show anger. His style was gentle and wry. As opposed to motormouth contemporaries like Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl, his defining trait was a cheerful, sloth-paced delivery, stammering, pausing, gradually, meticulously working his way through a sentence. He belonged to neither of the great branches of American humor — the legacies of Jewish or Black comedy. A Roman Catholic from the west side of Chicago, Newhart came off as an entirely respectable example of Midwestern nice.Newhart brought his own kind of neurosis, a comedy rooted in nuanced deadpan and silence. He was exasperated, clinging to sanity. He wasn’t one to get revenge in a joke. When I met him at his home for an interview tied to his 90th birthday, he had no scores to settle, no grievances or assumptions he was looking to upend. He was even humble and magnanimous talking about death, saying he thought he knew what awaited him after he passed away, but wasn’t sure. Then he joked about a comic who famously (and unfairly) accused him of stealing a bit: “Maybe I’ll come back as Shelley Berman and be pissed at myself.”Bob Newhart could occasionally get lumped in with the “sick comics” of the mid-20th century and his early work did have a political, even slangy edge. One of his signature bits, where an advertising man coaches Abraham Lincoln before the Gettysburg Address, was a pointed critique of the cynicism of professional politics. “Hi, Abe, sweetheart” begins the man from Madison Avenue, who encourages him to work in a plug for an Abraham Lincoln T-shirt. When the president says he wants to change “four score and seven years ago” to “87,” the ad man first patiently explains they already test marketed this in Erie. Then he says: “It’s sort of like Mark Antony saying “Friends, Romans, countrymen, I’ve got something I want to tell you.”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 Television

      The ‘Newhart’ Finale Is One of Bob Newhart’s Crowning Achievements

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      The finale has become so famous in part because it offered a rare moment of real surprise from a taped prime-time television sitcom.Open any search engine you like and type in these words: “best TV finales.” Scroll through the dozens — heck, hundreds — of articles written about which shows really “stuck the landing,” delivering the kind finish that fans still talk about.The “Newhart” finale should be on nearly all of those lists. For its last few minutes alone, “Newhart” deserves emeritus status on every roundup of best TV endings, best TV moments, funniest pranks, you name it. In perpetuity.What makes it an all-timer? One knockout of a punchline.For eight seasons — from 1982 to 1990 — Bob Newhart entertained millions on “Newhart,” playing Dick Loudon, a how-to book author and the co-owner of a quaint Vermont inn with his wife Joanna (Mary Frann). The success of “Newhart” was especially remarkable given that Newhart had already had a long run on TV in “The Bob Newhart Show,” which ran for six seasons, also on CBS, from 1972 to 1978.He had spent those six years playing Bob Hartley, a Chicago psychologist who coped with his kooky patients with the help of his loving wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette). These two characters, Loudon and Hartley, both drew on Newhart’s stand-up comedy persona: the stammering, muttering everyman, delivering hilariously deadpan reactions to the madness of modern life.The “Newhart” finale bridged the gap between the two shows, with an ending that had Dick Loudon getting knocked out by a golf ball in Vermont and then waking up in a Chicago bedroom as Bob Hartley, with Emily by his side. The implication was that the entire run of “Newhart” had been Bob’s dream. On the night of the finale’s taping, the “Newhart” studio audience whooped in delight.Most of the series finale was a seemingly straightforward “Newhart” episode. With, foreground from left, Newhart, Mary Frann, Gedde Watanabe and Tom Poston.CBS, via Everett CollectionWe 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