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      Louis C.K.’s Grammy Victory Leads to Backlash

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      Some comedians are questioning how the Recording Academy saw fit to bestow an award to someone who had admitted to sexual misconduct.“How was your last couple years?” the comedian Louis C.K. says to the audience on the first track to his album “Sincerely Louis CK.” “How was 2018 and 2019 for you guys? Anybody else get in global amounts of trouble?”Louis C.K. did, after he admitted, in 2017, to masturbating in front of women. Several said in interviews that he had done so without their consent; in a statement acknowledging the incidents, he claimed he had always asked first, but later realized that was insufficient since there were power differentials at play. For a short time he disappeared from public view, as a movie he directed and starred in was shelved and other deals dissolved in the early days of the #MeToo movement.But Louis C.K. returned to stand-up, first at comedy clubs and then at bigger venues, which often sold out. And on Sunday night he received a sign of support from the entertainment industry: “Sincerely Louis CK” — his first album since the scandal — won the Grammy for best comedy album.The album opens with the chants and wild applause of an audience.The response to his Grammy was less joyous. As his name trended on Twitter, many comedians, comedy fans and others wondered how the Recording Academy saw fit to bestow an award to someone with an admitted history of sexual misconduct.“Every woman who has been harassed and abused in the comedy business, I hear you and see you and I am so, so angry,” the podcast host Jesse Thorn, who interviews comedians, wrote, followed by several expletives.Female comics shared their own responses. Jen Kirkman posted a segment from her latest album, “OK, Gen-X,” in which she recounts her own encounter with Louis C.K. She had avoided talking about in detail previously, she explained in the bit, because of negative and threatening blowback. “I’ll forward you the rape threats I get after this,” she said.On Sunday, Kirkman reposted some messages from supporters of Louis C.K. who responded to her, often hatefully and in terms that diminished the experiences of assault survivors.The Australian performer Felicity Ward offered a lengthy list of mostly female comics “who’ve never sexually assaulted anyone. Follow, see, buy their stuff.”And the comedian Mona Shaikh wrote in The Hollywood Reporter that the award sent a troubling message. “The comedy establishment sends a dog whistle to sexual predators, forgiving their abusive actions as long as they offer a superficial apology (often drafted by their publicists) and go underground for a year or so,” she wrote. “After that, they can emerge and revive their careers.”Last fall, after the nomination of Louis C.K. and others like Marilyn Manson — who is facing an investigation over multiple sexual assault allegations — drew public ire, Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, defended the right to nominate anybody as long as they met the organization’s eligibility rules.“We won’t look back at people’s history, we won’t look at their criminal record, we won’t look at anything other than the legality within our rules of, is this recording for this work eligible based on date and other criteria,” he told the trade publication The Wrap. (Marilyn Manson was later removed from the nominations list as a songwriter on Kanye West’s track “Jail,” but remained eligible as one of West’s collaborators on “Donda,” which was up for album of the year.)Rather than weighing in on who could be nominated, Mason said the Grammys would instead draw a line around who was invited to the ceremony, held this year in Las Vegas. The comedy award was one of dozens presented in a ceremony that was held before the prime-time broadcast and was shown online only. Louis C.K. did not attend. Representatives for the Recording Academy did not return requests for comment.On the album, amid bits about religion, aging and sex, Louis C.K. addresses his misconduct a few times, mostly jokingly. “Man, I was in a lot of trouble,” he says in the opening. “Wait till they see those pictures of me in blackface. That’s going to make it a lot worse. Because there’s a lot of those, there’s thousands of pictures of me in blackface. I can’t stop doing it. I just — I like it. I like how it feels.”This trophy is the third Grammy for Louis C.K. in the comedy album category.The Recording Academy does not release details of how its more than 11,000 eligible members vote. Members are limited in the number of categories they may cast a vote in, as the academy tries to encourage them to vote in their various areas of expertise. The nominations process was tweaked for this year’s awards after complaints of secret agendas and uneven playing fields, and boycotts by major artists like the Weeknd.In recent years, the Recording Academy has also been roiled by accusations that it did not include or acknowledge enough women or people of color, and the organization has pledged to do better. But a report last month from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California found that the number of women credited on pop songs has remained largely unchanged for a decade, and that a Grammy-led effort to hire more female producers and engineers did almost nothing.The comedy category has changed names and focus somewhat over the years as recorded comedy shifted from musical numbers to spoken word. Bill Cosby won the prize a record seven times; in 2012, one of his albums was also named to a Grammys Hall of Fame. In the 64-year history of the Grammys, women have been nominated more than 40 times for comedy but only five have won awards outright: Elaine May (as part of a duo with Mike Nichols); Lily Tomlin; Whoopi Goldberg; Kathy Griffin; and, in 2021, Tiffany Haddish. More

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      in Television

      Will Smith Resigns From Academy After Slapping Chris Rock at Oscars

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      The producer of the telecast said that Smith had been asked to leave after slapping Rock, and that he had urged officials not to “physically remove” him. LOS ANGELES — Will Smith, who slapped the comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars, said Friday that he was resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, saying that he had “betrayed” its trust with conduct that was “shocking, painful, and inexcusable.”The sudden announcement came late Friday afternoon, days after the Academy had condemned Mr. Smith’s actions and opened an inquiry into the incident. “I have directly responded to the Academy’s disciplinary hearing notice, and I will fully accept any and all consequences for my conduct,” he said in a statement on Friday. “I deprived other nominees and winners of their opportunity to celebrate and be celebrated for their extraordinary work,” he said in the statement. “I am heartbroken.”He said that he would “accept any further consequences the board deems appropriate.”“Change takes time,” he concluded, “and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.”The academy said that it accepted his resignation. “We have received and accepted Mr. Will Smith’s immediate resignation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” David Rubin, its president, said in a statement. “We will continue to move forward with our disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith for violations of the Academy’s Standards of Conduct, in advance of our next scheduled board meeting on April 18.”Now that he has resigned, Mr. Smith will no longer have access to academy screenings and events. He will also not be able to vote in the Academy Awards. However, he could still be nominated for an award, since being a member is not a requirement for eligibility. Mr. Smith’s resignation came roughly 12 hours after Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast, spoke publicly about the episode for the first time. In an interview with Good Morning America” on ABC, the network which also broadcasts the Oscars, Mr. Packer said that after Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the ceremony, he urged the Academy leadership not to “physically remove” him from the theater in the middle of the live broadcast.Mr. Packer said he had learned from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there were discussions of plans to “physically remove” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he said he immediately approached academy officials and told them that he believed Mr. Rock did not want to “make a bad situation worse.”The Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith, who the academy said refused to leave following the incident, apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the academy denounced his actions.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.“I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time,” Mr. Packer said. “Because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It has been explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave.”In the interview, Mr. Packer also said that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling.”“He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” he said of Mr. Rock.Someone close to Mr. Rock who asked to speak anonymously because the Academy’s inquiry into the incident is ongoing said that Mr. Rock was never asked directly if he wanted Mr. Smith removed. Had he been asked, it was not clear how Mr. Rock would have responded, the person said. Mr. Rock was only asked if he wanted to press charges, and he said that he did not, the person said.Mr. Packer said that, like many viewers at home, he had originally thought the slap might be part of an unplanned comedic bit, and that he was not entirely sure until he spoke with Mr. Rock backstage that Mr. Smith had actually hit the comedian.“I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali,” Mr. Packer recalled Mr. Rock telling him.Mr. Packer said that Mr. Smith reached out and apologized to him the morning after the Oscars. And he praised Mr. Rock for having kept his cool. “Chris was keeping his head when everyone else was losing theirs,” he said.“I’ve never felt so immediately devastated,” Mr. Packer said of the incident.Asked if, after hearing Mr. Smith’s acceptance speech, he wished that the actor had left the ceremony, Mr. Packer said that he did, noting that Mr. Smith had not used his remarks to express real contrition and apologize to Mr. Rock.“If he wasn’t going to give that speech which made it truly better, then yes, yes,” Mr. Packer said when asked if he wished Mr. Smith had left the ceremony. “Because now you don’t have the optics of somebody who committed this act, didn’t nail it in terms of a conciliatory acceptance speech in that moment, who then continued to be in the room.”Mr. Smith did not apologize to Mr. Rock until Monday evening, after the Academy had condemned his actions and initiated disciplinary proceedings against him. Mr. Packer’s comments came after days of questions about why Mr. Smith had seemed to face no repercussions for striking a presenter on live television.The academy said in a statement earlier this week that Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the awards ceremony following the slap, but had remained. Then several publications questioned that account, citing anonymous sources, and reported that Mr. Packer had suggested he stay. Shortly after the ceremony ended Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement saying that the person who had been slapped had “declined to file a police report.”In the interview, Mr. Packer described his recollection of law enforcement’s involvement.“They were saying, this is battery, we will go get him,” Mr. Packer said in the interview. “We’re prepared to get him right now. You can press charges. We can arrest him.”“Chris was being very dismissive of those options,” Mr. Packer continued. “He was like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ He was like, ‘No, no, no.’”Both on Sunday night and in subsequent interviews this week, the Los Angeles police have maintained that Mr. Smith’s slap qualified as misdemeanor battery under California law — and that as a misdemeanor, officers cannot take action unless the victim in the case files charges, which Mr. Rock did not do.In an interview on Thursday, Deputy Chief Blake Chow, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau, described the department’s role in less dramatic terms. At the Oscars, police officers are primarily responsible for patrolling outside the Dolby Theater and the Academy hires a security company to handle issues inside the building, he said.On Sunday, one police captain was stationed backstage as a liaison, the deputy chief said. The police captain inside did not observe the slap himself; but he quickly became aware of it, the deputy chief added. The police captain made contact with a representative for Mr. Rock shortly after the comedian had finished presenting an award and had returned backstage with his team, Deputy Chief Chow said.The representative communicated “Chris Rock’s wishes” that he did not want to press charges or file a police report, the deputy chief said. “He didn’t want to do anything.”The police department was not asked to escort Mr. Smith out of the venue, and even if the police had been asked to do that, such a request would not have fallen within the department’s purview, the deputy chief said.Detectives followed up on Monday with Mr. Rock’s representatives to ensure that he still did not want to take action. He reaffirmed that he did not, the deputy chief said.Mr. Rock made his first public comments about the incident on Wednesday at a comedy show in Boston. “I’m still kind of processing what happened,” Mr. Rock said, while promising to discuss the episode in greater depth later. “It’ll be serious, it’ll be funny, but I’d love to — I’m going to tell some jokes.”After nominating only white actors and actresses for its awards in 2015, drawing widespread criticism, the academy did it again the next year — overlooking performances like the one Mr. Smith gave in “Concussion.” At the time, Ms. Pinkett Smith was outspoken about what many people saw as an urgent need for the academy to become more inclusive. Smith was less pointed in his criticism, but joined her in a boycott of the ceremony, drawing attention to the #OscarsSoWhite movement.Nicole Sperling More

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      in Movies

      Jerrod Carmichael Comes Out in ‘Rothaniel,’ but It’s About More

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      In “Rothaniel” on HBO, the stand-up grapples with secrets that defined his upbringing, the toll silence has taken and the price he’s paying to break it.In his 2014 debut special, “Love at the Store,” the stand-up comic Jerrod Carmichael offered advice to gay people about the right time to come out of the closet. “Save it until you need it,” he said, quipping: “I would come out of the closet when a friend asked me to move.”It’s one of many of his old jokes that hit differently after “Rothaniel,” a riveting new special from Carmichael who, sitting onstage at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York, reveals that he is gay, has been lying about it for years and wants to now tell the truth. Coming out of the closet will be the headline, especially in a stand-up scene historically rife with homophobia, but the most fascinating, charged material in this hour (premiering at 9 p.m. Friday on HBO) grapples with the roots of his silence — and the price of breaking it.Stylishly directed by Bo Burnham, who staged Carmichael’s last special, “8,” with similar idiosyncrasy, “Rothaniel” begins with a street-level shot looking up at snow falling, then follows Carmichael walking toward the club, but from so far away that you can’t make him out. As a director of specials, Burnham specializes in claustrophobic close-ups, which he employs here too, but he begins at a distance.As soon as Carmichael starts talking, you realize that he has kept us at one, too — until this reintroduction. While he has the same charming smile and supremely relaxed conversational style, he sounds different here: melancholy, earnest and poetic, direct. He’s now sitting, encouraging the crowd to talk back, speaking in an intimate tone, leveling with us and himself. Those old provocative stand-up premises only hinted at this new man, especially when they dug into family matters. “I want to talk about secrets,” he says early on here. “I felt like I was birthed into them.”This is a work about the complexity and ubiquity of secrets. It’s a word he has used before in similar ways. In his last special, he looked at a white woman in the front row who came with a Black boyfriend and said: “If his grandma were alive, you would be a secret.”Now he isn’t joking. Or he isn’t only joking. This special doesn’t feel like stand-up but it is. Carmichael is masterful at disguising punch lines in a thought so as not to interrupt its flow. The jokes are ultimately ornamental, decorating the emotional core: a story told through confessions. The initial one reveals that his first name is actually his middle name. The special’s title is a reference to his real one, a conflation of two of the names of his grandfathers. He explains in detail how much he hated the name, how he bribed yearbook editors in school to change it and got the bank to remove it from cards. It’s one of many biographical moments that illustrate how he developed the tools for the closet, how to live with things that, as he put it, “exist but don’t exist.”Much of this has to do with family history, which he has always talked about in his work but glancingly. Now he is blunt, detailing lives that also held secrets people knew but didn’t at the same time. Carmichael is alert to how pervasive they are, showing us the normal ones we don’t think much about. For example, he digs into the irony that we all are a product of our parents having sex, but none of us can stand to talk with our parents about sex.Carmichael is an incredibly poised, even chilly performer, comfortable in silences, seemingly unflappable. But what he does in this special is deconstruct this persona, reveal it as a useful mask, even an inherited one. He doesn’t just show us the roots of this façade, but also why he clung to it — and what it cost him. Some of this, like his explanation of why he smiles so much, is brutally frank. Other times it’s really funny. Being in the closet, he says, made him overcompensate: “Sometimes we’re making out,” he says about a boyfriend, “and just whisper ‘no homo’ to each other.”The heart of this show is about the painful tension between family ties and personal growth, and the most searing segments focus on his relationship with his mother. Her reaction to his sexuality, rooted in her faith, leaves him cold. The fact that he has such love for her, that he describes himself as an echo of her in some ways, makes this even more poignant. This special, which at its climax finds its star hunched in a nearly fetal posture, hits jarring notes that have never been matched in this form.It’s not just emotionally raw, but present and immediate in a way that a polished joke will never be. In one remarkable moment toward the end, he looks directly at the camera, and I physically turned away, as if it were so private that it would be impolite to watch.Art this uncomfortable tends to have rough edges, and this special does, too. But it’s artfully presented, almost to a fault. Burnham and Carmichael are such slickly skillful and assured artists that it can be hard to believe them when they get messy. Carmichael isn’t trying to tell an uplifting story so much as a real one, and “Rothaniel” does not build to a tidy resolution. It’s raw, and you might have some questions.I would recommend watching Carmichael’s lovely little 2019 documentary, “Home Videos” (also on HBO Max), shot in his hometown Winston-Salem, N.C., that features a conversation with his mother to give her some equal time. You can see the warmth between them, and his role as a needling son, asking her if she ever did cocaine or slept with a woman. When she says no, he tosses out abruptly that he hooked up with men. In a later interview, he downplayed the comment as just something he said in the moment.His mother has her story, too, though this special isn’t about that. Earlier this week, Carmichael performed at Union Hall in Brooklyn to prepare for hosting “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, an episode that will be surely dominated by bits about the Academy Awards. He joked that he was the least famous person to ever host “S.N.L.” and that all you had to do to get the gig was come out of the closet. He said he hadn’t talked to his mother in months though he once did every day.Once again, he was sitting, chatting with the crowd less than delivering a set, and seemed to be seeking something in the moment, a real experience, albeit one that could help him build a monologue. Carmichael asked the audience what he should talk about on Saturday. Someone yelled gas prices. “I’ve been rich too long,” he retorted.Another person mentioned the feud between Kanye West and Pete Davidson. Carmichael said he knew both of them through discussions about mental health and suicide. “But now,” he joked, “every time I hear about either of them I want to kill myself.”But when someone mentioned possibly doing a song, Carmichael shook his head, saying that was not in his performer’s tool kit. “I wish I was an entertainer,” he said. “My skill is I’m not afraid and I have a pocket full of matches.” More

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      in Movies

      Oscars Producer Did Not Want Will Smith Physically Removed After Slap

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      Will Packer, the producer of the telecast, said that Smith had been asked to leave after slapping Chris Rock, and then there were discussions of having him physically removed.Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast that was thrown into upheaval after the actor Will Smith went onstage and slapped the comedian Chris Rock, said Friday that after Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the ceremony, he urged the Academy leadership not to “physically remove” him from the theater in the middle of the live broadcast.Mr. Packer said he had learned from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there were discussions of plans to “physically remove” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he said he immediately approached academy officials and told them that he believed Mr. Rock did not want to “make a bad situation worse.”“I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time,” Mr. Packer said. “Because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It has been explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave.”EXCLUSIVE: #Oscars producer Will Packer tells Good Morning America about the frenetic aftermath of actor Will Smith slapping host Chris Rock live on stage on Hollywood’s biggest night. https://t.co/AeoYcGkM32 pic.twitter.com/8z35t8TPFw— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 1, 2022
      Mr. Packer gave his first interview since Sunday’s broadcast to “Good Morning America” on ABC, the network which also broadcasts the Oscars. In the interview, Mr. Packer said that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling”“He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” he said of Mr. Rock.Mr. Packer said that, like many viewers at home, he had originally thought the slap might be part of an unplanned comedic bit, and that he was not entirely sure until he spoke with Mr. Rock back stage that Mr. Smith had actually hit the comedian.“I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali,” Mr. Packer recalled Mr. Rock telling him.Mr. Packer said that Mr. Smith reached out and apologized to him the morning after the Oscars. And he praised Mr. Rock for having kept his cool. “Chris was keeping his head when everyone else was losing theirs,” he said.The Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith, who the academy said refused to leave following the incident, apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the academy denounced his actions.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.“I’ve never felt so immediately devastated,” Mr. Packer said of the incident.Asked if, after hearing Mr. Smith’s acceptance speech, he wished that the actor had left the ceremony, Mr. Packer said that he did, noting that Mr. Smith had not used his remarks to express real contrition and apologize to Mr. Rock.“If he wasn’t going to give that speech which made it truly better, then yes, yes,” Mr. Packer said when asked if he wished Mr. Smith had left the ceremony. “Because now you don’t have the optics of somebody who committed this act, didn’t nail it in terms of a conciliatory acceptance speech in that moment, who then continued to be in the room.”Shortly after the ceremony ended Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement saying that the person who had been slapped had “declined to file a police report.”In the interview, Mr. Packer described his recollection of law enforcement’s involvement.“They were saying, you know, this is battery, was the word they use in that moment,” Mr. Packer said in the interview. “They said we will go get him; we are prepared. We’re prepared to get him right now. You can press charges. We can arrest him. They were laying out the options, and as they were talking, Chris was being very dismissive of those options. He was like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ He was like, ‘No, no, no.’”Both on Sunday night and in subsequent interviews this week, the Los Angeles police have maintained that Mr. Smith’s slap qualified as misdemeanor battery under California law — and that as a misdemeanor, officers cannot take action unless the victim in the case files charges, which Mr. Rock did not do.In an interview on Thursday, Deputy Chief Blake Chow, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau, described the department’s role in less dramatic terms. At the Oscars, police officers are primarily responsible for patrolling outside the Dolby Theater and the Academy hires a security company to handle issues inside the building, he said.On Sunday, one police captain was stationed backstage as a liaison, the deputy chief said. The police captain inside did not observe the slap himself; but he quickly became aware of it, the deputy chief added. The police captain made contact with a representative for Mr. Rock shortly after the comedian had finished presenting an award and had returned backstage with his team, Deputy Chief Chow said.The representative communicated “Chris Rock’s wishes” that he did not want to press charges or file a police report, the deputy chief said. “He didn’t want to do anything.”The police department was not asked to escort Mr. Smith out of the venue, and even if the police had been asked to do that, such a request would not have fallen within the department’s purview, the deputy chief said.Detectives followed up on Monday with Mr. Rock’s representatives to ensure that he still did not want to take action. He reaffirmed that he did not, the deputy chief said.Mr. Rock made his first public comments about the incident on Wednesday at a comedy show in Boston. “I’m still kind of processing what happened,” Mr. Rock said, while promising to discuss the episode in greater depth later. “It’ll be serious, it’ll be funny, but I’d love to — I’m going to tell some jokes.”The academy said Wednesday that it had initiated disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith “for violations of the academy’s standards of conduct, including inappropriate physical contact, abusive or threatening behavior, and compromising the integrity of the academy.” It said that Mr. Smith would be given a chance to respond and that at its next board meeting, on April 18, it “may take any disciplinary action, which may include suspension, expulsion or other sanctions.” More

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      in Movies

      Will Smith Apologizes to Chris Rock After Academy Condemns His Slap

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      “I was out of line and I was wrong,” said Smith, who hit Rock at the Oscars after the comedian made a joke about his wife. The film organization opened an inquiry into the incident. Will Smith walked onstage and slapped Chris Rock after the comedian made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, the actress Jada Pinkett Smith. Mr. Smith then yelled and cursed at Mr. Rock after returning to his seat.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesLOS ANGELES — Will Smith apologized to the comedian Chris Rock on Monday evening for slapping him during Sunday night’s Oscars telecast after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which administers the awards, denounced his actions and opened an inquiry into the incident.Mr. Smith, who had pointedly not apologized to Mr. Rock on Sunday night when he accepted the award for best actor, wrote on Instagram Monday evening that “I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris.”“I was out of line and I was wrong,” he said in the statement. “I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be.”His apology came as the academy, a major Hollywood union and others criticized his actions, which stunned viewers around the world and overshadowed the Oscars. “The academy condemns the actions of Mr. Smith at last night’s show,” the film organization said in a statement. “We have officially started a formal review around the incident and will explore further action and consequences in accordance with our bylaws, standards of conduct and California law.”The academy’s statement came after a meeting Monday. A five-page document on standards of conduct that accompanied it spells out behavior the organization deems unacceptable. It prohibits “physical contact that is uninvited and, in the situation, inappropriate and unwelcome, or coercive sexual attention.” Also not allowed is “intimidation, stalking, abusive or threatening behavior, or bullying.”Disciplinary action, according to the bylaws, could include “suspension of membership or expulsion from membership.”The Academy was not known to have expelled a member before 2017, when Harvey Weinstein was removed amid allegations of sexual harassment and rape. Then, in 2018, after adopting a code of conduct for members, the organization expelled Bill Cosby, who had been convicted of sexual assault, and the filmmaker Roman Polanski, who had fled the country years earlier while awaiting sentencing for statutory rape.The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the union representing thousands of people who work in film, television and radio, called the incident “unacceptable” but said that it “does not comment on any pending member disciplinary process.”“Violence or physical abuse in the workplace is never appropriate and the union condemns any such conduct,” the union said in a statement Monday. “The incident involving Will Smith and Chris Rock at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable.”How to Understand the Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the Academy denounced his actions and opened an inquiry into the incident.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.The incident unfolded Sunday night after Mr. Rock made a joke about the buzzed hair of Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia, a condition that leads to hair loss. Mr. Smith responded by walking onto the stage of the Dolby Theater and slapping Mr. Rock, leaving stunned viewers wondering at first if the blow might have been scripted until Mr. Smith returned to his seat and warned him to stop talking about his wife, using expletives.Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith in the audience at the ceremony.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesBehind the scenes at the Oscars, there were serious discussions about removing Mr. Smith from the theater, according to two industry officials with knowledge of the situation who were granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations. But time was short, because the best actor award, which Mr. Smith was heavily favored to win, was fast approaching, one noted — and stakeholders had varying opinions on how to proceed. There was also concern about further disrupting the live broadcast, the other said.As the show went on, the actor Denzel Washington spoke with Mr. Smith during a commercial break. Not long after that Mr. Smith won best actor. (Mr. Smith said in his speech that Mr. Washington had told him: “At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.”) In his onstage remarks, Mr. Smith apologized to the academy and to his fellow nominees — but not to Mr. Rock — and defiantly sought to draw parallels to the character he played in “King Richard,” the father of Venus and Serena Williams.“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” Mr. Smith said.He received a standing ovation.Mr. Smith said in his statement Monday that he had reacted emotionally because a joke about his wife’s medical condition was “too much for me to bear.” Mr. Smith also apologized to the Academy, the show’s producers, the viewers, the people who worked on “King Richard” and the Williams family.“I deeply regret that my behavior has stained what has been an otherwise gorgeous journey for all of us,” he said. “I am a work in progress.”The incident overshadowed the awards. On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” on Monday George Stephanopoulos described it as “something we have never seen before, something that is very hard to process: Will Smith, walking up onto that stage after Chris Rock told a joke about his wife — simply assaulting Chris Rock.”The powers-that-be at the Oscars had been intent on not repeating last year’s record-low ratings, putting a series of changes in place they had hoped would draw more viewers: installing three comic actresses as hosts, pretaping some awards to try to quicken the pace, introducing a fan-favorite award that viewers could vote on. But the broadcast became must-see television for a reason they did not anticipate.“Welp … I said it wouldn’t be boring #Oscars,” Will Packer, one of the show’s producers, tweeted after the show. He later added: “This was a very painful moment for me. On many levels.”The telecast drew a larger audience than last year’s, but interest remained depressed compared with past years. The awards show attracted 15.4 million viewers on ABC, a 56 percent improvement on the 9.85 million people who watched the 2021 event, according to ABC. Sunday night’s show was still the second least-watched Oscars ever.Comedians, who tell uncomfortable and sometimes offensive jokes for a living, raised concerns about the precedent Smith had set.“Let me tell you something, it’s a very bad practice to walk up onstage and physically assault a comedian,” Kathy Griffin tweeted. “Now we all have to worry about who wants to be the next Will Smith in comedy clubs and theaters.”Jimmy Kimmel, the comedian and talk show host who had been the last person to host the Oscars, said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” that he felt bad for the show’s hosts; for Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, who won the best documentary feature award Mr. Rock had been presenting, and for Mr. Rock, who he said “certainly didn’t deserve that.”“In a way, I feel bad for Will Smith too, because I think he let his emotions get the better of him, and this should have been one of the great nights of his life,” Mr. Kimmel said. “And now it’s not. Was there anyone who didn’t like Will Smith an hour ago in the world? Like no one, right? Now he doesn’t have a single comedian friend — that’s for sure.”Whoopi Goldberg, who is on the academy’s board of governors and has hosted the show several times, said on “The View” on Monday that she did not think Smith’s award would be revoked, citing Mr. Rock’s decision not to press charges.“We’re not going to take that Oscar from him,” she said. “There will be consequences, I’m sure.”Mr. Rock after the incident with Mr. Smith, seated in front of him. Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe Los Angeles Police Department said it was aware of what it described as an incident involving “one individual slapping another” at the Oscars. The police said the person involved had “declined to file a police report.”“If the involved party desires a police report at a later date,” the police said, they would move forward and “complete an investigative report.”At least one member of the academy, Marshall Herskovitz, a former president of the Producers Guild of America, called for Mr. Smith to face disciplinary action.Two industry officials said that Mr. Rock’s joke had apparently been ad-libbed.And Bruce Vilanch, a past head writer of Oscars shows who did not work on this year’s, said: “Everything that is in the script is vetted. But if a comedian comes out onstage and ad-libs something, there’s no time to vet. I’m guessing that’s what happened last night. What I’m hearing from everybody is that this was not the material that was rehearsed.”Mr. Rock has teased the Smiths from the Oscars stage before. In 2016, when the Smiths boycotted the awards show because the nominees in the four acting categories were all white, Mr. Rock, that show’s host, joked about it. “Jada says she not coming, protesting,” he said. “I’m like, ain’t she on a TV show? Jada is going to boycott the Oscars — Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited.”Mr. Smith was not deterred from celebrating his win on Sunday night, dancing at a crowded party after the Oscars while holding his trophy, but he avoided questions about the incident. A publicist for Mr. Rock did not immediately respond to requests for a comment.Jaden Smith, one of the Smiths’ children, tweeted simply: “And That’s How We Do It.”The reaction inside and outside Hollywood ranged widely. In interviews following the show, at after-parties and on social media, Smith’s colleagues variously expressed sadness, confusion, disbelief, anger and, in some cases, empathy. Many deflected or ignored questions about the episode entirely.The actor Mark Hamill called it the ugliest Oscars moment. “Stand-up comics are very adept at handling hecklers,” he wrote on Twitter. “Violent physical assault … not so much. #UgliestOscarMoment_Ever.”One top studio executive, who declined to speak on the record, voiced disappointment in Smith and in the fact that the audience in the theater gave him a standing ovation.And Janai Nelson, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, worried aloud in a tweet that “the way casual violence was normalized tonight by a collective national audience will have consequences that we can’t even fathom in the moment.”Others seemed to defend Mr. Smith. “Many takes on here about Will Smith and Chris Rock, especially from people whose partners are not Black women (mainly white people),” the author Frederick Joseph tweeted. “I don’t care if it’s a joke or not, the amount Black women have to endure — people are tired of it. We have no idea what Jada has gone through.”And the comedian Tiffany Haddish, who starred in the movie “Girls Trip” with Ms. Pinkett Smith, said in an interview with People magazine at an after-party that she appreciated seeing Mr. Smith protect his wife.“Maybe the world might not like how it went down,” Ms. Haddish said, “but for me, it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen because it made me believe that there are still men out there that love and care about their women, their wives.”Even still, the day after, the prevailing reaction was mostly one of disbelief.“We’re not sure where the fallout will end up,” Ryan Seacrest said Monday on his morning show “Live With Kelly and Ryan.” “It was one of those moments that we couldn’t believe when we saw it.”Sperling reported from Los Angeles. Matt Stevens and Julia Jacobs reported from New York. More

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      Oscars Gets Higher Ratings Than Last Year’s Academy Awards

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      The Academy Awards on Sunday night drew a larger audience than last year, when viewership plunged to an all-time low, but interest remained depressed amid disruptions to television- and movie-watching habits.The 94th edition of the awards show attracted 15.4 million viewers on ABC and a 3.2 rating among adults between 18 and 49 years old, according to a preliminary report from Nielsen released to ABC on Monday. The early results showed a 56 percent improvement on the 9.85 million people who watched last year’s event, according to ABC, though the show was still the second-least-watched Oscars ever on record.Initial viewership figures evolve in the days after the show to factor in West Coast audiences as well as out-of-home and livestream viewing.The telecast took a bizarre turn more than two hours in, when Will Smith strode onstage and slapped Chris Rock in the face for telling a joke about his wife. Mr. Smith then returned to his seat, and less than an hour later, he won the best actor prize.The early data did not indicate whether there was a surge in viewership after the slap, which immediately ricocheted around the internet.Organizers have been desperate to reverse a yearslong ratings slide for the Oscars, which saw viewership last year plummet 58 percent. To perk up interest, they hired the comics Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes to host a show that had been hostless since 2019; relegated some awards to a pretaped segment to hurry along what still clocked in at more than 3.5 hours; and invited fans to vote on Twitter for their favorite film (Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead”).The broadcast hit its peak in 1998, when 55.2 million viewers tuned in to watch “Titanic” sweep the awards, and has struggled to retain its cultural relevance since. Awards shows took an additional hit during the pandemic but had already been facing criticism for being too white, too long, too politicized and too boring. Viewership for the Grammy Awards, which will be held this weekend, slumped 53 percent to a new low last year; NBCUniversal declined to even broadcast this year’s Golden Globes.Mr. Smith’s attack happened after Mr. Rock, who was handing out the award for best documentary, joked about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and her closely cropped hair.“Jada, I love you — ‘G.I. Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it, all right?,” he said, referencing the 1997 film ‘G.I. Jane,’ which featured Demi Moore sporting a buzz cut.The joke prompted an eye roll from Ms. Pinkett Smith, who has been vocal about her struggles with alopecia, a condition that leads to hair loss. Mr. Smith then marched onto the stage, slapped Mr. Rock, turned around and returned to his front-row seat. Then, using an obscenity, he yelled at the comedian to stop speaking about Ms. Pinkett Smith.The slap appeared onscreen, but many viewers in the United States did not hear Mr. Smith shout at Mr. Rock because ABC cut the sound. That left many viewers initially wondering if the attack was real or a skit. Uncensored clips soon shot around the internet, leaving no doubt that it was real.Mr. Smith won best actor for his role in “King Richard.”Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesForty minutes later, Mr. Smith won the best actor trophy for his role in “King Richard.”He returned to the stage to receive the award — his first — and delivered an emotional speech apologizing to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and to his fellow nominees, but not to Mr. Rock.“I hope the academy invites me back,” he said at the end of his speech.The outburst divided Hollywood. The academy said it “condemns the actions of Mr. Smith” and that it was starting an inquiry. The actor Mark Hamill called it the ugliest Oscars moment, while the comedian Kathy Griffin said it was “very bad practice.”Tiffany Haddish, a comedian who co-starred with Ms. Pinkett Smith in the film “Girls Trip,” described Mr. Smith’s protective display as “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Piers Morgan, the British television host, wrote that he felt “moved to defend” Mr. Smith.Ariana DeBose, Troy Kotsur and Jessica Chastain with their Oscar statues on Sunday night.Noel West for The New York TimesThe confrontation jolted a broadcast whose most exciting moments earlier had included historic acting wins by Ariana DeBose of “West Side Story” and Troy Kotsur of “CODA” and a surprise appearance by the rapper Megan Thee Stallion in a performance “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the hit from “Encanto,” which won best animated feature.Despite being aired on a broadcast network, the night underscored the upheaval to theatergoing and traditional television caused by streaming services and online platforms.“CODA,” which featured Mr. Kotsur as a deaf fisherman trying to relate to his hearing daughter and was snapped up by Apple TV+ for $25 million after debuting at the Sundance Film Festival last year, was the first film from a streaming service to win a best picture Oscar. Jane Campion, the director of Netflix’s “Power of the Dog,” beat out Steven Spielberg, who directed “West Side Story,” to claim the directing trophy.But the Oscars telecast continued to draw advertising attention. ABC sold out of spots for commercials the week before the show, which featured ads from Crypto.com, Pfizer, Rolex, Verizon and more. Many companies also tried to take advantage of the altercation between Mr. Smith and Mr. Rock by posting memes of the slap, to which marketing experts reacted with dismay. More

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      Exploring the Diversity, and Precariousness, of French Stand-Up

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      Fanny Herrero, the creator of “Call My Agent!,” returns with a Netflix show called “Standing Up,” which follows four struggling Parisian comics.PARIS — In the opening scenes of “Standing Up,” Nezir (Younès Boucif) mines his life for stand-up material as he cycles across Paris on a food delivery shift.“I’m poor,” he says to himself, testing the sound of the words in French. “It’s not handy to be poor. I don’t recommend it.” On the way, he crosses paths with a friend, Aïssatou (Mariama Gueye), who is begging a shop owner to advertise her comedy show.“Standing Up” is the latest project from Fanny Herrero, who created the showbiz comedy “Call My Agent!” In this new show, which comes to Netflix on Friday, she again takes viewers behind the scenes to see how deals and careers are made, this time in a less prestigious corner of French cultural life: stand-up comedy.Aïssatou and Nezir head to the Drôle Comedy Club — the show’s title in French is “Drôle,” meaning “funny” — for that night’s performances. The club’s owner, Bling (Jean Siuen), has had success, but is now struggling to come up with material, as the next generation of comics come up in his own club.Over the course of six episodes, “Standing Up” explores what it takes — and means — to “make it” in comedy. Herrero conceived of the show after a dinner three years ago with the comedian Gad Elmaleh, who told her about Paris’s growing stand-up scene. On his recommendation, she went to the Paname, the city’s first stand-up comedy club. She was amazed by the diversity onstage, she said in a recent interview: People of different ethnicities and from various backgrounds — from the suburbs outside Paris, from other cities, from the countryside — were performing. “It’s the story of our country,” Herrero said.The show’s struggling stand-up comics reflect this diversity. Nezir, who is of Algerian descent, and Aïssatou, who is Black, have both been in the game for a while, and are trying to get more recognition. Bling’s real name is Étienne, a very French name he jokes his Vietnamese parents chose to help him assimilate.The show frequently addresses racism in French society, even as some of the country’s politicians and high-profile intellectuals have recently decried the spread of American “woke” ideas around identity.In one episode, the police stop Aïssatou after she has looked through large shopping bags for her sunglasses. She jokes about the incident that night, and is warned not to mention at her solo show by her white producer. In another, Nezir makes a joke about how the only Arabs well-to-do Frenchwomen encounter are Uber drivers or Saudi princes. “As an Arab in France, I’ve lived in a lot of situations as Nezir,” said Boucif, who is also a rapper and holds a master’s in environmental law from the prestigious Sorbonne University.The show’s title in French is “Drôle,” meaning “funny.”Mika Cotellon/NetflixApolline (Elsa Guedj) meets Nezir (Boucif) at the comedy club.Mika Cotellon/NetflixBling (Jean Siuen) has had success in the comedy world, but is struggling to come up with material when the show opens. Mika Cotellon/NetflixPeople of color were instrumental in establishing the French stand-up scene, which is far younger than in the United States or Britain. Between 2006 and 2015, “Jamel Comedy Club” aired on French television, hosted by Jamel Debbouze, one of the country’s top comedians. Himself of Moroccan heritage, Debbouze featured largely people of color on his show. This gave “a voice to ethnic minorities that they didn’t have on TV shows,” said the comedian Paul Taylor, who performs in a mix of English and French.Taylor said there are only four clubs in France that follow the English-speaking stand-up tradition, with a lineup of several comedians each night. Generally, solo shows are favored in France, a result of the country’s strong theatrical tradition. Besides Paname, the three other clubs only opened in the last three years: Madame Sarfati, Fridge and Barbès Comedy Club.The Drôle Comedy Club in “Standing Up” was a purpose-built set, just in case Paris went into lockdown because of the coronavirus. The actors practiced their sets at Barbès Comedy Club, which opened for clandestine nights during Paris’s second lockdown, with around 10 comedians performing for around 30 audience members. The audience didn’t know the “Standing Up” actors weren’t comics, or that they were practicing for a television show.When it came time to film the characters’s stand-up sets at Drôle, the audience was made up of nonactors, with a camera trained on the performing comedian, and another on the audience’s reactions. “There is nothing worse than fake laughs and fake reactions,” Herrero said.Well-respected French comedians — Jason Brokerss, Fanny Ruwet and Shirley Souagnon — wrote the characters’ sets. Like “Call My Agent!,” the show features cameos, in this case from other French comics, including Hakim Jemili and Panayotis Pascot, who perform snippets of sets throughout each episode. Unlike with the appearances by internationally famous actors in “Call My Agent!,” Herrero doesn’t expect the French public, let alone Netflix viewers from other countries, to recognize these performers.Netflix has had a significant impact on stand-up in France. Before the rise of streaming services, only dogged French stand-up fans dug around the internet to look for performances. Now, comedy specials hosted by the streaming service have made American comedy much more accessible in France.Boucif named Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K. as comedians he liked from his research for playing Nezir. “I like stand-up when it’s subversive, when it’s not politically correct,” he said. When asked about Louis C.K.’s admitted sexual misconduct and the controversy surrounding Chappelle’s comments about transgender people, Boucif said he didn’t know about those issues.Nezir and Aïssatou (Mariama Gueye) are both trying to make it as stand-up comics.Mika Cotellon/NetflixBoucif’s response is similar to the way many French comedians approach American comedy, Taylor said. They gravitated to the same few names who got the big Netflix deals, he said, but don’t understand the surrounding context.One of the later episodes of “Standing Up” includes a translated Louis C.K. joke. Herrero, who is aware of the comic’s past sexual misconduct, said the writing staff chose him because they needed a name the French audience would know.In her career so far, Herrero has broken with French television norms. She was not only the screenwriter for “Call My Agent!” but also, following the first season, named its showrunner. Typically, French screenwriters conceive of shows, then hand their script and control to directors, she said. The role Herrero negotiated with network executives looks more like the American showrunner model, where she retained overall control.France 2, the broadcaster that aired “Call My Agent!,” hasn’t run anything like it since. “It was a miracle,” Herrero said. “Most [French studios] are doing cop shows and family comedies,” she added.“Standing Up” is unusual in the French TV landscape for being a dramedy. The show’s target audience is relatively young, and Herrero said she hopes it will help stand-up comedy continue to gain credibility in the French mainstream.“It’s because of Netflix this show can exist,” she added. More

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      ‘All My Friends Hate Me’ Explores British Social Anxiety

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      The film “All My Friends Hate Me” satirizes anxiety and paranoia among upper-class British millennials. Its writers say they are laughing at themselves most of all.LONDON — Seven years ago, Tom Stourton, 35, received a wedding invitation from two college friends. He was surprised, having drifted apart from the couple. But he attended the event, arriving hung over and sleep deprived from another party the night before.“Over the course of the day, I became increasingly paranoid that I had been invited as a joke,” Stourton recalled in a recent video interview. He feared the groom would reveal the prank during the speeches.Looking back more recently, “it seemed like a funny idea,” he said, “being somewhere where you should be having fun with your friends, but there’s this undertone of something hostile.”The writer, actor and comedian wove this setup into a screenplay with his co-writer, Tom Palmer, also 35. The resulting film, “All My Friends Hate Me,” opens in limited theaters Friday, before coming to streaming platforms later this month.Stourton plays Pete, an anxious, self-involved 31-year-old who corrals a group of college friends to celebrate his birthday in the countryside. Over the course of the boozy weekend, he becomes increasingly worried that they secretly despise him. In a video interview, the film’s director, Andrew Gaynord, described its world as “manor houses and posh people and rolling fields — very British.”For Pete and his “mates,” the equally British social norm of keeping a stiff upper lip conceals contemporary anxieties about class, wealth and privilege. Insecurities are deeply felt but never discussed, and over the course of the weekend, Pete’s mental state starts to unravel. The film is part black comedy, part psychological thriller. “I liked the idea of a guy blowing things out of proportion in his head — and that playing like a horror film,” Gaynord said.Social anxiety like this is one aspect of a constellation of mental health issues impacting young British people, and its effect on young men has been getting more attention in recent years. Twenty percent of men in Britain aged 16 to 29 are likely to experience some form of depression, according to a recent report from the Office for National Statistics. The BBC recently announced a new documentary about men’s mental health, which is centered on the singer James Arthur, and, in Arthur’s words, “our reliance as a nation on anti-depressants.”In 2019, Prince William helped introduce a campaign, Heads Together, to tackle stigma around mental health. Last year, his younger brother, Prince Harry, discussed his own struggles in “The Me You Can’t See,” a documentary series for Apple TV+ that he co-produced with Oprah Winfrey.When they were writing the script, Palmer and Stourton wanted to make sure they were depicting anxiety authentically within this wider cultural context. So Palmer consulted with the author Olivia Sudjic, whose 2018 book, “Exposure,” discusses modern anxiety. According to Sudjic, millennials, in particular, can be on high alert, policing their own behavior. In a recent video interview, she described this anxiety as a “ripple effect” of “paranoia around ‘cancel culture’ and vigilance online” that afflicts a generation of adults who grew up on the internet.Pete (Stourton), left, and Archie (Graham Dickson) both struggle with fragilities in the film.Super LtdBut in the four years since “Exposure” was published, the ways that anxiety is discussed have shifted, Sudjic said. Before the pandemic, there was a “stigma,” she said, around being open about your mental health issues if your life looked more comfortable than other people’s. Then, during Britain’s lockdowns, even the wealthy struggled. Since then, it’s become more “OK to talk about mental health even if you feel like you’re very privileged,” she said.In “All My Friends Hate Me,” which was filmed in late 2019, the discomfort of acknowledging your own wealth and privilege needles the characters, a familiar thread in much of Stourton and Palmer’s work. The pair met at Eton College, an elite all-boys boarding school known for educating princes and prime ministers. After university, they formed the comedy duo “Totally Tom,” and in 2010, a YouTube video they made went viral. In it, Stourton plays a student at the University of Bristol, or as Palmer put it to The Spectator newspaper, a “posh buffoon” trying incredibly hard to be cool. The following year, they were nominated for best newcomer at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for a show directed by Gaynord, who the pair had met on the British comedy circuit.The character of Pete is a continuation of these themes.“They’re sort of fair game, aren’t they?” Palmer said in the video interview, referring to “posh people.” The pair wrote the film with a focus on trying to make fun of themselves, Stourton said.Gaynord, however, comes from a different background. “I grew up in a council house,” he said. “My mum’s a cleaner, my dad’s a taxi driver, in Manchester. My school wasn’t particularly good.” What he and “the Toms” had in common, he said, was a tendency toward anxiety and overthinking.Material circumstances are at the root of the “existential dread” plaguing many young British men, according to Alex Holmes, the author of “Time to Talk: How Men Think About Love, Belonging and Connection.”In a recent video interview, Holmes described turning 30 as “the benchmark age where everything has to change dramatically.” Not meeting certain milestones — like acquiring a mortgage, getting married and starting a family — can lead men to a lot of anxiety around a “feeling of catching up,” he said.In “All My Friends Hate Me,” Pete finds himself in his friend’s parents’ house, drinking his friend’s parents’ whiskey. As the weekend goes on, his friends also mock him in a scathing “comedy roast” that Pete finds deeply unfunny. It’s a nod to the cruel humor Stourton was surrounded by as a student, which was really “a way to get one up on someone, so the jokes don’t end up being angled toward you,” he said.The infantilizing nature of the weekend becomes an additional source of stress for Pete, as does the presence of Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns), a new addition to the group, and his ex and current girlfriends. The film finds comedy in the tension between the intensity of Pete’s suffering at all this and the possibility it’s all in his head.“It’s particularly funny,” Stourton said, “watching the white privileged man experiencing being gaslit.”After all, “he doesn’t have any real problems in his life,” Gaynord said. “I think it’s quite cathartic to laugh at that.” More