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      With a Beloved Cafe Threatened, Broadway Stars Put on a Show

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith a Beloved Cafe Threatened, Broadway Stars Put on a ShowFans in the theater world, including Matthew Broderick and Debra Messing, will appear in a Christmas Day telethon to try to save the West Bank Cafe.Janet Momjian performs for a GoFundMe video for the West Bank Cafe at the restaurant in Manhattan.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020Updated 1:29 p.m. ETWhen Tom D’Angora got the news that the West Bank Cafe — a popular show business hangout whose basement theater hosted the first “Sunday in the Park With George” rehearsals and Joan Rivers’s final performance — was in danger of closing, he sprang into action.“You’re not closing,” D’Angora, a theater producer, told the restaurant’s owner, Steve Olsen, in an early December text. “Over my dead body.”But Olsen could see no way out: His outdoor dining revenue had dropped to almost nothing since Thanksgiving as temperatures plunged, and, even before the city moved to ban indoor dining, his new air filters and constant cleaning efforts had failed to draw many eaters into the 42-year-old restaurant. He was already thinking about how to empty out the space, and considering where to put the artwork.D’Angora wouldn’t hear of it. He and his husband, Michael, a fellow producer, put their heads together about trying to save the restaurant, a Hell’s Kitchen mainstay on 42nd Street just west of Ninth Avenue.Broadway stars have gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Tony Award wins and commiserate over losses.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“I was like, ‘Between the six billion famous, talented, brilliant people who also love this place, we’re going to figure this out,’” D’Angora said.The actor Tim Guinee overheard their conversation while picking up an order of chicken enchiladas at the restaurant, and together they came up with the idea for a virtual Christmas Day telethon that would feature musical performances, skits and West Bank Cafe stories from as many actors as they could find. In the meantime, D’Angora created a GoFundMe page, and within 10 days, more than 1,400 donors had raised more than $168,000 of the $250,000 goal.“We’d seen ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” D’Angora said, referring to the film in a which a community comes together to save an endangered family banking business. “And we just told Steve, ‘OK, it’s your George Bailey moment.’”The telethon, which will begin streaming at noon on Friday, will include appearances by around 200 artists, among them Matthew Broderick, Pete Townshend, Debra Messing, Nathan Lane, Alan Cumming, Isaac Mizrahi and Alice Ripley. Joe Iconis, the composer and lyricist of the Broadway musical “Be More Chill,” is producing the fund-raiser, which he said would last at least five hours.Broderick, the star of “The Producers” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and a cafe regular, said he was sad to see another New York City business with a rich history on the verge of closing forever.“There are whole swaths of places that have closed since March, not just in Hell’s Kitchen or Times Square, but everywhere,” said Broderick. “It’s terrifying. These places are what make New York New York.”Broadway stars including André De Shields and Nathan Lane have gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Tony Award wins and commiserate over losses, and Bruce Willis, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller all dined there.The cafe’s 100-seat basement theater, which opened in 1983, a few years after the restaurant, has had its own memorable moments: Warren Leight’s Tony Award-winning play “Side Man” had its debut there, Lewis Black spent more than 10 years as its playwright in residence, and it staged early Aaron Sorkin plays and occasional drag shows.Olsen, 66, has spent his entire adult life running the restaurant, which he opened in 1978 in a Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood that was still considerably grittier, and more dangerous, than it is today. “This location was considered Siberia,” Olsen said. “42nd Street and Ninth Avenue was as far west as anyone was willing to venture.”Members of an Irish gang, the Westies, were among the fledgling restaurant’s clientele. He resisted pressure to hire one of their men as a bartender, and to bring in their female friends as waitresses. “Everyone said it was because I was courageous,” he said, laughing. “But I just didn’t know. I was in my early 20s. I was immortal.”The empty bar at the West Bank Cafe in Manhattan. Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWhen Broadway theaters shut down in March, D’Angora remembered, Olsen was the one worrying about his clientele. “He was concerned about how I was holding up,” D’Angora said. “He’d hand me a bottle of champagne or wine. He was never worried about himself.”Now that clientele wants to return the favor. After closing the second week of March and laying off all but six of his 53 employees, Olsen reopened with outdoor dining last summer. The restaurant also began delivering out of the neighborhood, which brought in a few thousand dollars a week. “I was making deliveries down to TriBeCa in eight minutes,” Olsen said. “There were no cars on the streets. I racked up four speeding tickets from the cameras in the first three months.”“But after Thanksgiving, business went down to nothing,” he said. “I don’t know very many people who can put up $10,000 a week indefinitely to keep a business going out of their own pocket.”Olsen said the $250,000 goal for the GoFundMe campaign would pay off the debt the restaurant has taken on because of the pandemic, and make a dent in some of their future expenses to help them get back on their feet in the spring. “At first, I was a little bit embarrassed to admit I needed help,” he said. “But my family and friends have stepped up, and I’m grateful.”He’s given himself some homework. “I owe the 1,400 people who’ve donated so far thank you letters,” he said. “Those will come out — individually — after the holidays.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      R. Kelly Is Set to Face Trial in Chicago in September

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyR. Kelly Is Set to Face Trial in Chicago in SeptemberA judge acknowledged that the date for the singer’s federal trial on child pornography and obstruction charges could change because of pandemic-related delays.R. Kelly and two associates have been accused by federal prosecutors in Chicago of paying witnesses and victims in a previous child pornography trial to change their stories.Credit…Pool photo by E. Jason WambsgansDec. 22, 2020, 6:55 p.m. ETA date was set on Tuesday for the singer R. Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago on child pornography and obstruction charges, but even the judge said the date was “not set in stone” given the pandemic-related delays that continue to bog down the court.Judge Harry Leinenweber of U.S. District Court set Kelly’s trial for Sept. 13, five months after another federal trial Kelly faces in New York.Prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois told Leinenweber they would need three weeks to present evidence against Kelly, who is facing charges that he and two former employees conspired to fix his 2008 state trial in Cook County on child pornography charges by paying off witnesses and victims to get them to change their stories.Mr. Kelly is also scheduled to face trial on April 7 in New York on racketeering charges. In that case, an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn alleges that Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, and his associates ran a criminal enterprise that recruited women and underage girls for illegal sexual contact and then isolated and threatened them to keep them under control and prevent them from going to the authorities.If convicted in the New York case, Mr. Kelly faces up to 20 years in prison. The federal charges in Chicago have the potential to add decades more in prison, and Kelly is also facing state charges of criminal sexual abuse that were filed in Chicago in February 2019.Kelly, 53, has been held in the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago since his arrest in July 2019. Since then, his lawyer, Steven Greenberg, has unsuccessfully made at least six arguments for Kelly’s release, citing the danger of the coronavirus and an attack on Kelly over the summer by another prisoner, a member of the Latin Kings street gang who was later sentenced to life in prison on an unrelated racketeering conviction.Most cases in federal court in Chicago were halted in the spring, but jury trials resumed in August with new safety protocols. Even so, Leinenweber has said that Chicago’s federal courthouse would not be able to accommodate a trial with three defendants with those protocols in place.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stimulus Offers $15 Billion in Relief for Struggling Arts Venues

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStimulus Offers $15 Billion in Relief for Struggling Arts VenuesThe coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.An empty United Palace Theater in New York. $15 billion of a $900 billion coronavirus relief package is designed to help the culture sector survive after a nearly yearlong revenue drought.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesBen Sisario and Dec. 21, 2020, 4:24 p.m. ETFor the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that congressional leaders agreed to this week offers the prospect of aid at last: it includes $15 billion to help them weather a crisis that has closed theaters and silenced halls.The money, part of a $900 billion coronavirus relief package, is designed to help the culture sector — from dive-bar rock clubs to Broadway theaters and museums — survive. Many small proprietors described it as their last hope for being able to remain in business after a nearly yearlong revenue drought.“This is what our industry needs to make it through,” said Dayna Frank, the owner of First Avenue, a storied music club in Minneapolis. She is also the board president of the National Independent Venue Association, which was formed in April and has lobbied Congress aggressively for relief for its more than 3,000 members.As the news of the deal began to trickle out on Sunday night, a collective sigh of relief ricocheted through group text messages and social media posts. “Last night was the first time I have smiled in probably nine months,” Ms. Frank said.Dayna Frank, the owner of First Avenue in Minneapolis, said, “This is what our industry needs to make it through.”Credit…Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesBroadway theaters, which have been closed since March, applauded the relief package.“We are grateful for this bipartisan agreement which will provide immediate relief across our industry and a lifeline to the future,” Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, the trade organization for producers and theater owners, said in a statement.Nataki Garrett, the artistic director for Oregon Shakespeare Festival, said that the aid would be crucial for nonprofit theaters. “Our situation was critical and dire,” she said.But the leaders of some large nonprofit cultural organizations worried that the way the bill is structured — giving priority to organizations that lost very high percentages of their revenue before considering the rest — could put them at the back of the line for grants, since they typically get a significant portion of revenues through donations.With the bill set to be approved in both chambers of Congress as early as Monday evening, arts groups around the nation were cautiously celebrating while studying the fine print to see what kind of aid they might qualify for. Most doubt the entertainment industry can fully swing back into action until well into next year, at the earliest.The bill allows independent entertainment businesses, like music venues and movie theaters, along with other cultural entities, to apply for grants from the Small Business Administration to support six months of payments to employees and for costs including rent, utilities and maintenance. Applicants must have lost at least 25 percent of their revenue to qualify, and those have lost more than 90 percent will be able to apply first, within the first two weeks after the bill becomes law.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      The Year in Improvised Music: ‘Everything’s Changing. So the Music Should.’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Year in Improvised Music: ‘Everything’s Changing. So the Music Should.’The pandemic compressed live music onto screens, and Black Lives Matter protests brought it back to the streets. What will it all look like, and sound like, in 2021?Norman Edwards and Endea Owens playing outdoors. Ms. Owens helped put together bands to perform at protests.Credit…Anthony ArtisDec. 17, 2020When concerts and in-person gatherings shut down this spring, livestreamed shows quickly started to feel like a glorified last resort. I found myself avoiding them. But a Facebook video caught my eye one day in June, of the trombonist Craig Harris performing at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Accompanied by the keyboardist Pete Drungle, framed by a flowering grove and a trellis, he played “Breathe,” a suite of concise and soothing music that sounds like the sum of Mr. Harris’s experiences on the New York scene since the 1970s.He had written “Breathe” after Eric Garner’s killing by New York police in 2014; it was his reflection on the notion of breath as a great equalizer, and as the source of Mr. Harris’s own powers as a trombonist. But at the start of this video, he turns to those affected by Covid-19. He offers the suite as “a sonic reflection for those who have passed, and those who are born,” Mr. Harris says. “We have to think about the lives of the people who are born in this period now. That’s a whole thing, the beginning and the end.”The performance was taped in May, before George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis and its nightmarish resonance with Garner’s death. By the time Mr. Harris’s video was released in June, protesters were constantly in the streets, and the suite’s original message had become painfully relevant again. But even in this new light, the poise and sensitivity that Mr. Harris had intentionally brought to this performance didn’t feel out of place.For any lover of live performances — but especially jazz and improvised music — 2020 will be remembered, joylessly, as the year of the stream. Musicians have done their best with what they’ve had, usually by leaning into intimacy; we saw a lot of artists’ bedrooms this year. But it was actually in the moments when musicians zoomed out — when they made our perspective bigger, and connected this difficult moment with a greater sense of time — that improvised music did its most necessary work.With concerts impossible, the vocalist and interdisciplinary artist Gelsey Bell assembled “Cairns,” a remarkable audio tour of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn; it’s part philosophy talk and part experimental music composition, built of Ms. Bell’s overdubbed vocal improvisations and the sounds of the cemetery as she walks.Green-Wood is a majestic place, and there is something robust and alive about it, even though generations of history lie in its soil. “As I started making it, I was really thinking about our relation to the land and the history it holds, and then where we find ourselves now,” Ms. Bell said of “Cairns” in an interview. “To be connected to the land you live on is to be connected to both its history and the other people that you’re sharing space with.”On the hourlong recording, Ms. Bell tells of various little-known but significant figures, using their histories to illuminate what she calls “the apocalyptic foundations of this place.” And she gives us the histories of the trees, instructing us to listen to the ways they sing to each other, and will continue to after we’re gone.Hiking up a hill, Ms. Bell and her collaborator Joseph White turn the sounds of her breathing and walking into a kind of mulchy, rhythmic music. “Because of breath, we’ll never forget how stuck in time we are, how mortal we are,” she says, making the word “mortal” sound like a good thing.It wasn’t impossible to make music via stream that really pulled people together — just rare — and on this front, couples had an advantage. The week that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended all concerts be put on hold, the vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant and the pianist Sullivan Fortner propped up a camera beside the piano in their living room and broadcast a set of music via Facebook to thousands of viewers. The comments section turned into a chattery town square, full of nervous and grateful people unsure of what the coming months would bring.The bassist Dezron Douglas and the harpist Brandee Younger started performing duets from home every week, ultimately collecting them in a disarming album, “Force Majeure,” released this month. The saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and the drummer Tom Rainey got in the habit of recording their wide-ranging living room improvisations and publishing them on Bandcamp, in a series that continues under the name “Stir Crazy.”A listener taking in Gelsey Bell’s “Cairns,” an audio tour of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.Credit…Sasha Arutyunova for The New York TimesMs. Bell said she thought “about our relation to the land and the history it holds, and then where we find ourselves now.”Credit…Sasha Arutyunova for The New York TimesWorking alone, the clarinetist Ben Goldberg also started posting daily solo recordings in March on a Bandcamp page labeled “Plague Diary”; it now has nearly 200 entries. Listen for long enough and the tracks of overdubbed instrumentals and low, repetitive rhythms start to run together, like the hazy interminable feeling of existing at home amid lockdown.The saxophonist Steve Lehman swung in another direction, releasing a less-than-10-minute album, “Xenakis and the Valedictorian,” featuring snippets of exercises and experiments that he had recorded on his iPhone, practicing in his car each night so that his wife and daughter could have peace in the house.Continuing to perform during the pandemic — near impossible as it often was — was both a creative and a financial imperative for improvisers, many of whom saw all of their upcoming performances canceled in March. But newly liberated from obligation, inspired by the movement sweeping the country, many also began to organize.Much good critical attention was paid this year in the music press to the ways that our listening habits have had to adjust to lockdown, and to how performances have changed. But what about the institutions that also fell quiet — especially the schools and major arts nonprofits, which have perpetuated massive racial and economic disparities in access to the music? Will they all look the same when things come back online?The trombonist Craig Harris performed “Breathe” at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in May.Credit…Brooklyn Botanic GardenMusicians across the world came together via Zoom to organize the We Insist! collective to address these questions, eventually coming up with a list of demands to promote racial equity in major educational institutions and philanthropic groups in the jazz world. A group of artists of historically underrepresented gender identities came together in the Mutual Mentorship for Musicians collective, striking a creative blow against patriarchy in jazz. And as protests overtook streets nationwide, jazz musicians were often there.The bassist Endea Owens showed up on the second day of protests in New York back in May, she said in an interview. She almost immediately felt a need to contribute music, and she helped put together bands that played daily at demonstrations over the next three weeks. “We were out there for two to three weeks, walking from Washington Square Park to the Barclays Center, just playing,” she said. “That created a ripple effect of something creative, something positive. You felt like you had to fight for your lives.”In Harlem, where she lives, Ms. Owens started a monthly series of masked, socially distanced cookout concerts. Using donations as well as money from her own pocket, she has handed out 100 free meals at each one, while paying underemployed jazz musicians to perform. As a member of Jon Batiste’s Stay Human, the house band for “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Ms. Owens has been the rare jazz musician this year who could count on a steady paycheck.But without nightly gigs, she has still had an excess of downtime. Now that she has made connections with other organizers and mutual aid groups in the area, she is thinking about how to continue that effort into the future, even if the usual work opportunities for musicians come back.“There’s a big opportunity to make jazz feel more familiar and make it feel more accessible, where anyone can go to these shows,” Ms. Owens said. “I don’t even think it’s possible to go back to the way we did things. Everything’s changing. So the music should. The way we perform, the way we approach it, the places where we have this music.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Film Academy Museum Delays Its Opening Again

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFilm Academy Museum Delays Its Opening AgainThe Academy Museum of Motion Pictures pushed back its opening to Sept. 30, 2021, from April 30, citing the difficulty of forecasting when public life may begin to normalize.The museum recently installed a 1,208-pound model of the shark featured in “Jaws” above an escalator.Credit…Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressDec. 18, 2020, 1:00 p.m. ETLOS ANGELES — The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is starting to feel a little cursed. Since the project was announced in 2012 — with an opening expected in 2017 — setbacks have included sparring architects, the discovery of mastodon fossils by excavation crews, a budget that ballooned by roughly 90 percent, the ouster of its founding director and now, for the second time, the coronavirus pandemic.On Friday, the museum pushed back its opening to Sept. 30, 2021, from April 30, citing the virus and difficulty forecasting when public life may begin to normalize. The pandemic already scuppered a planned opening this week. “With the current surge of Covid-19, it would be irresponsible to maintain an April opening,” Bill Kramer, the museum’s director and president, said by phone. “It’s not because we aren’t ready. Work has been moving forward. We’re completely on track.”Ted Sarandos, chairman of the museum’s board of trustees and Netflix’s co-chief executive, added in a statement: “It’s just a matter of patience, for all of us, as we look ahead to opening our doors on Sept. 30.” A private gala was set for Sept. 25.How did the museum select those dates? This month, for instance, Warner Bros. said it would still be too difficult to release movies normally by next December because of the pandemic.Mr. Kramer said summer was not an ideal time to inaugurate a cultural institution (too many people scattered here and there). An early September opening would collide with the Telluride and Toronto film festivals.Had the $482 million museum stuck to its April plan, a marketing campaign would have started next month. Hiring was also set to begin for gallery guards and ticket takers.For all of its stops and starts, the museum has gotten its act together under Mr. Kramer, who was hired last year. (He previously served as vice president of development for the Brooklyn Academy of Music.) In recent months, the museum has hired the film scholar and Turner Classic Movies host Jacqueline Stewart as its chief artistic and programming officer; repaired relationships with Hollywood collectors; attained LEED eco-friendly certification; and reached its pre-opening fund-raising goal of $388 million. Despite difficult working conditions because of the coronavirus, crews have installed exhibits, including a 25-foot-long, 45-year-old fiberglass model of the mechanical shark that Steven Spielberg used to film “Jaws.”Mr. Kramer called the shark, nicknamed Bruce, “shockingly cool.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Harold Budd, Composer of Spaciousness and Calm, Dies at 84

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostHarold Budd, Composer of Spaciousness and Calm, Dies at 84Known for his collaborations with art-pop artists like Brian Eno and Cocteau Twins, he created a signature sound suspended in reverberation and drone.The composer and pianist Harold Budd in Birmingham, England, in 2011. His music was known for its unhurried, organic spontaneity.Credit…Steve Thorne/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDec. 17, 2020Updated 5:45 p.m. ETHarold Budd, a composer and pianist known for the preternatural spaciousness and melancholy calm of his music, and for his collaborations with art-pop artists like Brian Eno and Cocteau Twins, died on Dec. 8 in a hospital in Arcadia, Calif. He was 84.The cause was complications of Covid-19, which he contracted at a short-term rehabilitation facility while undergoing therapy after suffering a stroke on Nov. 11, his manager, Steve Takaki, said in an email.Born in Los Angeles, Mr. Budd grew up close to the Mojave Desert, a likely inspiration for the sparsity and vastness his music could evoke. Engaged initially by free jazz, John Cage’s avant-garde innovations and early minimalism, he broke with all of those styles to create a signature sound that centered on the piano, soft-pedaled, sustained and suspended in a corona of reverberation and drone.That sound, which Mr. Budd began to develop in 1972, found its initial fruition on “The Pavilion of Dreams,” a 1978 album produced and released by Mr. Eno. In 1980, Mr. Budd and Mr. Eno jointly created “Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror,” a watershed work for both artists, not least for its feeling of unhurried, organic spontaneity. For their next collaboration, “The Pearl,” released in 1984, they brought in a second credited producer, Daniel Lanois.“I just want to say one thing again clearly right now: I owe Eno everything,” Mr. Budd proclaimed in a 2016 interview with L.A. Record, a music publication. Recording with Mr. Eno in London had “opened up another world for me that I didn’t know existed,” he said, “and suddenly I was a part of it.”Mr. Budd would go on to work with other artists active in popular music, including Andy Partridge of XTC and John Foxx, a founder of Ultravox. A collaboration with the Scottish trio Cocteau Twins, whose music shared with Mr. Budd’s a quality of esoteric reverie, produced the 1986 album “The Moon and the Melodies.” An enduring bond with Robin Guthrie, the Cocteau Twins guitarist and songwriter, resulted in several film scores and duo albums. The latest, “Another Flower,” was recorded in 2013 but released this month.Mr. Budd announced his retirement from music in 2004, but within a few years he was working again, with fresh vitality and variety. “Bandits of Stature,” issued in 2012, comprised 14 succinct pieces for string quartet. By 2018, Mr. Budd was collaborating with chamber groups in concerts that amounted to career retrospectives, including a high-profile appearance at the 2019 Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn.When Mr. Budd died, Mr. Takaki wrote in an email, he had recently completed 19 new string quartets. Some had been recorded this year. Others have yet to be performed. Preparations to transcribe and edit Mr. Budd’s solo piano music and chamber works for publication began during the summer, and will continue.Mr. Budd in performance at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., in 2019.Credit…Jake Giles Netter for The New York TimesHarold Montgomery Budd was born on May 24, 1936, to Harold Budd, who worked in the textile industry, and Dorothy (McNeill) Budd, a homemaker. His father died when he was 13, resulting in financial hardship that prompted the family to move to Victorville, on the edge of the Mojave Desert.An early interest in jazz led Mr. Budd to take up the drums. He played nightclub dates in Los Angeles while working days at Northrop Corporation, the aircraft manufacturer, to support his family, and later attended Los Angeles Community College. Drafted into the Army, Mr. Budd performed in a band with the saxophonist Albert Ayler, who would later achieve renown as a free-jazz firebrand.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Kim Ki-duk, Award-Winning South Korean Filmmaker, Dies at 59

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve lostKim Ki-duk, Award-Winning South Korean Filmmaker, Dies at 59He was celebrated for movies centered on society’s underbelly, but he was later accused of sexual misconduct. He died of Covid-19.The South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk in 2013 at the Venice Film Festival, where his “Moebius” was screened out of competition. A year earlier, his film “Pieta” had won the Golden Lion there. Credit…Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDec. 17, 2020, 12:42 p.m. ETSEOUL, South Korea — Kim Ki-duk, ​an internationally celebrated South Korean film director who made movies ​about people ​on ​the margins of society​ that ​often ​included ​shocking scenes of violence against women, and whose career was dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct, died on Dec. 11 in Latvia.​ He was 59.The cause was Covid-19 and related heart complications, his production company, Kim Ki-duk Film​, said. According to the company, he had undergone two weeks of treatment for the disease at a hospital in Latvia, where he had recently relocated and was reported to have been scouting locations for his next film.Mr. Kim remains the only South Korean director to have won ​top ​awards at the three ​major international film festivals: those in Cannes, Venice and Berlin. He ​spent much of his time abroad after allegations that he had sexually abused actresses began to haunt his career in 2017​.Few film industry groups issued formal statements on ​Mr. Kim’s death or his films. ​Film critics who shared their condolences and appreciations on social media faced blistering reactions from people who said that doing so was tantamount to violence against his victims.“I stopped teaching Kim Ki-duk’s films in my classes in 2018 when the program about his sexual assaults screened on Korean TV,” Darcy Paquet​, an American film critic​ who specializes in Korean cinema​, wrote on Twitter.​ “If someone does such awful violence to people in real life, it’s just wrong to celebrate him. I don’t care if he’s a genius (and I don’t think he was).”​But Mr. Kim’s films also attracted fans who said his depictions of poverty and violence ​helped spark important debates about life in South Korea. “I try to discover a good scent by digging into a garbage heap,” he once said of his approach to filmmaking.His movies often centered on society’s underbelly. One dealt with a coldhearted man who turned a woman he once loved into a prostitute. He also tackled issues like suicide, rape, incest, plastic surgery and mixed-race children.“Crocodile” (1996), his first film, tells the story of a homeless man who lives on the Han River in Seoul and makes a living by stealing cash from victims who kill themselves or by recovering bodies in the river and demanding rewards from grieving families. The man saves a woman from suicide and then rapes her.Mr. Kim in Seoul in 2012 with the award he had just won in Venice. He was the only South Korean director to have won ​top ​awards at the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals.Credit…Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Pieta” (2012) is perhaps Mr. Kim’s most recognized film. A deeply unnerving tale, it follows a mother and son on a quest for revenge and redemption and includes graphic scenes of torture and violence. It won the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. The year before, Mr. Kim had received an award at the Cannes festival for “Arirang,” a documentary about a near-fatal accident that occurred on one of his shoots.While his movies often garnered critical acclaim abroad, most of them were commercial failures in South Korea.“I made this movie so that we can reflect upon ourselves living in this miserable world where you are lauded for succeeding in life even if you do so through lawbreaking and corruption,” he said after his movie “One on One,” about the brutal murder of a high school girl, flopped in 2014. “I made it hoping that some will understand it. If no one does, I can’t do anything about it.”Many moviegoers, especially women, were disturbed by what they considered perverted, misogynistic and sadistic scenes of violence against women in Mr. Kim’s movies. The criticism grew significantly in 2017 when an actress starring in Mr. Kim’s movie “Moebius” accused him of forcing her into shooting a sexual scene against her will.He was later fined for slapping her in the face, but other charges were dismissed for lack of evidence or because the statute of limitations had expired.More actresses came forward with accusations of sexual abuse. Women’s rights groups in South Korea rallied behind the victims, accusing Mr. Kim of confusing “directing with abusing.”He ultimately became known as one of the many prominent ​South Korean ​men​​ — including theater directors, prosecutors, mayors, poets and Christian pastors — to face serious accusations of sexual misconduct as part of the country’s #MeToo movement. In 2018, the local broadcaster MBC aired “Master’s Naked Face,” which examined the allegations against Mr. Kim.Min-soo Jo in a scene from “Pieta” (2012), perhaps Mr. Kim’s most recognized film.Credit…Drafthouse FilmsMr. Kim denied being a sexual predator and sued his accusers for defamation. The cases were still pending in court when he died.Mr. Kim was born on Dec. 20, 1960, in ​Bongwha, a rural county in the southeast of South Korea. His early formal education ended in primary school. His father was reported to have been a disabled Korean War veteran who abused him.As a teenager, Mr. Kim toiled in factories and sweatshops. He enlisted in the South Korean Marine Corps and later enrolled in a Christian theological school, before moving to Paris to study painting when he was 30.When he returned to South Korea in 1995, he was determined to become a film director and began churning out one low-budget movie after another, winning international recognition that few South Korean directors were able to achieve.Mr. Kim is survived by his wife and a daughter.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      BBC’s ‘Pandemonium’ and Covid-19: Are We Ready to Laugh About the Virus?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAre We Ready to Laugh About Covid-19? A British Sitcom Hopes SoWith ‘Pandemonium,’ the BBC is betting that an audience will find humor in reliving the ordeals of a very awful year.The cast of the BBC comedy “Pandemonium,” set during the coronavirus pandemic.Credit…Andrew Hayes Watkins/BBC StudiosDec. 16, 2020, 12:26 p.m. ETA British family is walking along a frigid beach, treating a fall vacation like it’s a restaurant entree everyone wants to send back to the kitchen. The whole expedition is a lame Plan B. The Jessups were originally going to Disneyland, followed by three days of hiking at Yosemite. Then the coronavirus struck and sunny California was out of the question. Now the clan is making do in Margate, a forlorn British seaside town that peaked decades ago.Paul Jessup, the paterfamilias, is depressed for a long list of reasons, including the loss of his job running an archery club. His wife, Rachel, is trying to remain upbeat and had hoped that the vacation would recharge the couple’s sex life. She packed an erotic outfit and a sex toy for just that purpose. But as the pair stand alone for a moment, Paul confesses that he just isn’t ready for it.“I love that you want to experiment with stuff,” he quietly tells her, “but I think I’ve gone off the idea of using the gear.”“Well, I wish I’d known that before squeezing it into the suitcase,” Rachel replies. “Leather is extremely difficult to fold, you realize.”Jim Howick and Katherine Parkinson, who play a married couple dealing with living through the pandemic, during filming in November.Credit…Andrew Hayes Watkins/BBC StudiosThis awkward exchange is brought to you by the BBC. It’s a scene from the pilot episode of “Pandemonium,” a half-hour comedy, set to air Dec. 30, that poses a bold question: Are we ready to laugh about Covid-19? Or rather, is there anything amusing, or recognizable in a humorous way, about life during a plague, with all of its indignities and setbacks, not to mention its rituals (clapping for health care workers) and rules (face masks, please).Television has already tackled life under quarantine, with shows such as “Connecting” on NBC and “Social Distance” on Netflix. But they focused on online conversations, largely restricting the characters to the cameras in front of their computers. “Pandemonium” is at once more conventional and bolder. The story unfolds in the family’s house, its car and then on vacation — a high-degree-of-difficulty venture in the midst of a pandemic.The challenges are evident on a brisk November afternoon, as the cast and crew mill around a railing by a stretch of beach in Margate. It is the final day of a six-day shoot, and the director, Ella Jones, is orchestrating a few takes of Paul (played by Jim Howick) explaining his sex toy change of heart to Rachel (Katherine Parkinson). Hair and makeup artists hover, a small production team arranges and tweaks cameras, microphones and monitors.As in every television production, the roughly 30 people at work here look like a nomadic tribe with a lot of expensive equipment. But Covid-19 has imposed a host of unusual restrictions and protocols. Everyone wears a colored wrist band. Red means you are part of the testing regime and can get close to the actors. Yellow means you are not part of the regime and must keep your time near the red bands to a minimum.As an added precaution, actors are prohibited from touching car door handles. A full-time production assistant, a sort of Covid cop, is charged with roaming the set and ensuring that virus protection rules are being followed.“I think she’s telling those people to stand farther apart from each other,” said Tom Basden, who wrote “Pandemonium” and plays Robin, Rachel’s depressed and chain-smoking brother. He was pointing to the woman policing coronavirus guidelines, who, it turned out, was squeezing sanitizer into the hands of a scrum of people.Tom Basden, who wrote “Pandemonium,” plays the depressed and chain-smoking character Robin.Credit…Andrew Hayes Watkins/BBC StudiosMr. Basden’s original script was Covid-19 free. The idea was to write a comedy about a family that was filmed entirely by the son — sometimes surreptitiously, usually not — with his video camera, a GoPro camera and a drone he bought himself. The lad was less a snoop than a budding documentarian. The conceit would give the standard family comedy a mockumentary twist.The BBC’s head of comedy, Shane Allen, greenlit the project, and until May, he resisted the idea that the show should even mention Covid-19. One of his goals is to make programs that feel ageless, ensuring a long run on iPlayer, the BBC’s increasingly popular on-demand platform. There were 3.1 billion iPlayer streams in the first six months of the year, up nearly 50 percent from 2019, the BBC reported in August.Shane Allen, the BBC’s head of comedy, initially resisted retooling the show to incorporate Covid-19, worried that it could make the show quickly feel dated.Credit…Alex Atack for The New York TimesInitially, Mr. Allen thought that a show centered around Covid-19 would quickly feel dated. But by May, the virus had killed so many and upended lives around the world in such a way that it had become both unnerving and familiar. On April 20, the Sun, a British tabloid, ran this unforgettable teaser on its front page: “596 dead. See page 4.”“By then, it felt like this huge political and social issue that we had to tackle,” he said in a recent interview. “We just needed to find a way to do it that was both cathartic and inoffensive.”Selling Mr. Basden on a Covid rewrite was easy.“I realized that there was a version of the story, which is about a California holiday not being taken because of coronavirus, that felt interesting to me,” Mr. Basden said. “I felt it had the potential to sum up the year for a lot of families in terms of what their experience has been, with all of the various disappointments along the way.”Whether Britons need a “cov-com,” as Mr. Allen dubbed the show, remains to be seen. Viewers may prefer to watch anything but a reflection of what they have just lived through. If you’re looking for pure escapism, a show in which a doctor on television is heard intoning, “Stay inside, wash your hands, follow the guidelines,” isn’t for you. Alternatively, the show could turn the ordeals imposed by Covid into bittersweet entertainment by demonstrating just how universal their effect has been.The show starts at a moment that now feels like eight years ago — namely, early 2020. The Jessups are booking their flights to California and Paul decides not to spend another $30 or so per ticket for refundable fares.“We’re not going to cancel,” he tells his wife. “That’s just a scam to make idiots pay more money.”The upbeat mood evaporates as the virus arrives. It shuts down Paul’s archery club, rendering him jobless. Robin, Mr. Basden’s character, is jilted by a woman who leaves him for her personal trainer. Now-familiar tensions and debates surface. At first, Paul’s mother, Sue, won’t take the virus seriously, exasperating her son. She also refuses to join in nationwide applause for National Health Service workers on Thursday nights.“Clapping?” she asks Paul, outraged at the thought. “After they cancel my hip replacement? Are you mad? I’m the only one on my street booing.”There are jokes that would fly over the heads of an American audience, like a reference to Dominic Cummings, the since-dismissed adviser to Boris Johnson, who made headlines by flouting lockdown rules. Other bits suggest that the United States still has substantial cultural heft here. When Paul tries to convince his daughter, Amy (Freya Parks), that he is woke, he proves it by noting that he read and loved Michelle Obama’s book.For the BBC, the show isn’t the sort of gamble that it would be for any other British or U.S. network. The Beeb, as it is known, is supported by taxpayers, who are required by law to hand over the equivalent of $210 dollars a year for a license to watch live television. (Yes, watching without a license is a criminal offense, and it can cost offenders about $1,300 in fines plus court costs.) But the show is an ambitious bet. It will air on BBC1, essentially the nation’s default network and home to the programming with the broadest appeal. A comedy that finds an audience on BBC1 can turn into a cultural institution.“There’s a lot of risk and a lot of failure when it comes to comedy,” said Mr. Allen. “But the things that do well stick around for years. Last year, Monty Python turned 50, and the surviving cast members did 10 sold-out shows at the O2 Arena. No other genre has longevity like that. Monty Python episodes are evergreens.”“There’s a lot of risk and a lot of failure when it comes to comedy,” said Mr. Allen. “But the things that do well stick around for years.”Credit…Alex Atack for The New York TimesIf the pilot for “Pandemonium” gets good ratings and credible reviews, a full season will be ordered and it will begin filming sometime next year.Putting together the pilot was, for obvious reasons, complicated. To keep preproduction, in-person meetings to a minimum, several members of the cast auditioned by sending homemade recordings of themselves reading their lines into a mobile phone.“I sat in my bedroom and put my iPhone on a tripod and my girlfriend read the other character,” said Jack Christou, who plays Ben, the Jessups’ son and budding videographer. “Then I sent it off to my agent and waited.”Soon he was getting a Covid test so that he could join other cast members for a few days of reading through the script at a BBC studio in White City, a district of London. Executives watched via Zoom. The Jessups’ home was filmed in Mill Hill, a suburb of London, over the course of three days. The wristband system was introduced, and anyone with a red band was tested daily. Yellow bands could enter the house for a few minutes if the actors were not in it.“I was doing a shoot in Cornwall for another show, and they had to close it down because someone came down with Covid,” Mr. Basden said. “I think that has happened quite a lot, particularly on shoots that are for any length of time. We’re lucky this is just six days.”The last three days were shot in Margate with the actors staying at a hotel where all the indoor common space was closed off. Many of the show’s vacation scenes take place outdoors, which curtailed Covid anxiety. The final scene shot on the last day of production follows the Jessups as they digest the news, read to them by Amy on her mobile phone, that Britain is going into its second lockdown, the one that started in October. Two members of the family decide on the spot that it’s time to end this cursed vacation.“No, we are not going home!” Rachel shouts. “Let’s just press on for as long as we legally can.”The scene was repeated a few times, with the director offering notes between each take. After the last one, the show officially wrapped, and the cast and crew whooped, celebrated and congratulated each other. Many couldn’t help offering Covid-be-damned hugs. Actors and crew posed on the beach for a photographer who wanted to capture the moment before everyone went home.“Put on your masks,” someone in the bunch said. “The BBC is going to see this.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More