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      ‘Don’t Make Me Over’: Dionne Warwick’s Documentary Encore

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      A conversation with the five-time Grammy-winning singer who is the subject of a new career-spanning documentary, “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over.”Dionne Warwick refuses to stay put. At 82, the five-time Grammy-winning artist is making stops in Hawaii and Vancouver on her One Last Time tour — she won’t say whether it’s truly her last — tweeting (or “twoting,” as she calls it) to her more than half a million followers, and making appearances on “S.N.L.” and on movie soundtracks like Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” When she retires, she said, she’ll move to Brazil.“I will be laying in Bahia, where I want to spend the rest of my life, enjoying the sunshine, the music, the people and me,” Warwick said.In the meantime, Warwick’s next venture is onscreen. In the documentary “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over” (which premieres on CNN Jan. 1 and begins streaming on HBO Max thereafter), she, along with well-known interviewees like Bill Clinton, Stevie Wonder and Alicia Keys, discusses her life and her 60-plus-year music career.Directed by Dave Wooley and David Heilbroner, the film details moments from Warwick’s childhood, including singing in her grandfather’s church in Newark, N.J., and chronicles chart-topping hits like “Walk On By” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” which were made with the producing and songwriting duo Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Those songs challenged the racial barrier between rhythm and blues and pop. (In 1968, Warwick became the first African American woman to win a Grammy in the pop music category.)As Warwick munched on cheese and crackers at the CNN offices in Manhattan, she talked about being a spokeswoman for the Psychic Friends Network, her motivation to support AIDS research and how she met Snoop Dogg and Chance the Rapper. Following are edited excerpts from the conversation.Warwick being interviewed in the documentary. “The fortunate thing is I could not be categorized,” she said. “I continue to preach the fact that music is music.”CNN FilmsThe documentary is titled “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over.” What inspired the name?“Don’t Make Me Over” was my first recording, my very first one, and the genesis of that was something I said to both Burt and Hal. I was promised a certain song, “Make It Easy on Yourself,” and they gave that song to Jerry Butler. I was on my way down to do a session with them and when I walked into the studio, I had to let them both know that I was not very happy about them giving my song away, first of all. That was something that they could never, ever do. Don’t even try to change me or make me over. So David put pen to paper.The documentary discusses your upbringing. What was it like growing up in East Orange, N.J.?It was virtually the United Nations. We had every race, color, creed and religion on our street. We were friends, we walked to school together, I had dinner at their homes, they had dinner at my home. We played at the playground together. We were just kids and hung out with friends. How were you able to create music that appealed to all audiences during the 1950s and 1960s, when rhythm and blues and pop music was racially classified?The fortunate thing is I could not be categorized. That was a joy. I look at — I still do this very day — and I continue to preach the fact that music is music. I don’t look at myself as the person that threw the door open. I just paved the way to let people know, “Yeah, Gladys Knight deserved a Grammy, yeah, the Temptations deserved the Grammy, yeah, Diana Ross deserved it.” Of course! We’re singing music that all of you are listening to, so why are you going to put us in a little box? I ain’t going.By donating all the proceeds of the chart-topping song “That’s What Friends Are For,” you’ve helped raise millions for AIDS research. What led you to get involved with the cause and how does it feel to leave such a lasting impact?We were losing performers, we were losing dancers, we were losing hair people, we were losing wardrobe people, cameramen, lighting people.I’ve lost two people in my group of people around me: my hairdresser and my valet both contracted AIDS. So, now, that’s too close. Let me find out what this is about. And I proceeded to get involved with W.H.O., World Health Organization, and we went to all the health departments in different countries to get a handle on not only what they were doing, but why they were not acknowledging that it’s happening in the country. I was able to help them bring their heads out of the sand and face reality.Warwick performing at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1968.David Redfern/Redferns, via Getty ImagesIn the ’90s, you got involved in the Psychic Friends Network. What encouraged that decision?It was during a period of time when my recordings were not being played on radio as much. It was a way to earn a very, very comfortable living. It paid very well — had to keep my lights on, too. So that’s how that all began.I can’t nor would I ever think about taking it seriously. And anybody that does, you have to look at them with a jaundiced eye.You felt very strongly about gangster rap, and set up an early meeting with Snoop Dogg, Suge Knight and others to encourage them to reconsider their lyrics. How did that conversation go?I called a meeting with them, and I gave them a time to be at my home. I told them not one minute before and not one minute after 7 a.m., I want that doorbell to ring. And it did. We sat and talked for quite a few hours. I told them, “You think I’m part of the problem? Make me part of the solution. Tell me what it is.” I said, “I have no problem with you saying whatever you’re feeling; however, there’s a way to say it.”Have you reached out to any other rap artists recently?Chance the Rapper, that was a funny thing as well. Why would you have to put “rapper” in your name when we all know you rap? Duh.He was more surprised that I even knew who he was, and as a result we’ve become friends. He has my phone number, I have his and we do talk. We recorded together, a wonderful song and not one curse word — a very, very positive message. So it’s not like they can’t do it, and if they need to be led a little bit, hey, that must be my job to do.Amid the pandemic, you rose to Twitter royalty. What’s it like to be crowned the queen of Twitter?They gave me the title. I didn’t take it. I didn’t give it to myself. They all decided I was the queen of Twitter. So yeah, OK, I’ll be your queen of Twitter. In fact, I started a new way of saying Twitter, I call it twoting.Twoting? Why twoting?I didn’t want to say “tweet.”When can we expect the next tweet (or twote) from you?I do it when I feel it. I also follow a lot of tweets that are going on, and when I find one that’s not too pleasing to me, you’ll hear from me.What do you think about the Whitney Houston biopic, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody”?I’m very protective of her, and I usually don’t talk about her. She’s at rest now, and I will let her do that. She’s at peace, thank God. He’s [Clive Davis, the record producer] assured me that it is about her music, about her legacy, what she was really all about. There’s no need for it to be anything other than that.What do you hope people will gain from the “Don’t Make Me Over” documentary?I’m hoping that people will finally get to know me, and not think they know me. They’ll get to know Dionne. I’m as human as everybody else. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Finding Your Roots’ and ‘Mayfair Witches’

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      Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s genealogy series returns on PBS. And a TV adaptation of an Anne Rice trilogy debuts on AMC.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Jan. 2-8. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: CHILDREN OF LAS BRISAS (2023) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The aspirations and creativity of young musicians tug against political turbulence and humanitarian crises in “Children of Las Brisas,” a documentary that follows members of a Venezuelan youth orchestra coming of age during that country’s revolution and the fallout of the death of its former president Hugo Chávez. When the film played at the DOC NYC festival in 2022, its director, Marianela Maldonado, described the intent behind it. “It’s about the pain of growing up with dreams of being an artist while living in a dysfunctional society,” she said. “It’s a story of survival and redemption through music.”WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME (2017) 6:15 p.m. on Showtime. There’s a dramatized version of the singer Whitney Houston’s life in theaters right now: the biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” For a nonfictional portrait, consider this feature-length doc, which pairs the voices of some of Houston’s friends, family members and collaborators with tour footage from the late 1990s. The result, Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review for The New York Times, is “a surprisingly conventional, dutifully respectful behind-the-scenes portrait.”TuesdayFINDING YOUR ROOTS 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In the first episode of the new season of his genealogy show, the scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. presents the actress Julia Roberts with a book filled with research about Roberts’s family history. Roberts, lifting the tome, looks at Gates with a smile. “This has got some heft to it,” she says. That’s often true — in more ways than one — of the research that anchors the series, which uses D.N.A. analysis and historical sleuthing to uncover the often-complicated backgrounds of its celebrity guests. Tuesday’s episode, which kicks off the show’s ninth season, features Roberts and Edward Norton. Other guests this season include the movie stars Claire Danes, Viola Davis and Danny Trejo; the pop star Cyndi Lauper; and the activist and scholar Angela Davis.WednesdayBULLITT (1968) 8 p.m. on TCM. When this now-classic neo-noir opened at Radio City Music Hall in the fall of 1968, the critic Renata Adler wrote in her review for The Times that it was “a terrific movie, just right for Steve McQueen — fast, well acted, written the way people talk.” But McQueen, the human celebrity, had to share the spotlight with a material co-star: a 1968 Ford Mustang, which has become as much a symbol of the movie as McQueen. Watch man and machine undulate and snap over San Francisco streets as McQueen’s Lt. Frank Bullitt chases mafiosos.ThursdayWes Studi, left, and Dale Dickey in “A Love Song.”Sundance InstituteA LOVE SONG (2022) 8 p.m. on Showtime. With a grand landscape and a modest story, this debut feature from the filmmaker Max Walker-Silverman centers on a widow, Faye (Dale Dickey), at a lakeside campsite in Colorado. She’s waiting on the arrival of her childhood friend Lito (Wes Studi), whom she hasn’t seen in years. Faye is isolated before Lito arrives, but things remain quiet even after he shows up; the chemistry between the two is expressed as much in silences and facial expressions as in words. It’s a “tender, laconic” movie, Jeannette Catsoulis said in her review for The Times. “More than one kind of love is being celebrated in that title, including the director’s affection for his home state, its wide-open spaces and wandering souls.”FridayRUPAUL’S DRAG RACE 8 p.m. on MTV. RuPaul’s mighty drag competition show moves to MTV from its old home, VH1, for its new, 15th season, which kicks off on Friday night with a two-hour special. The new season gathers 16 drag queens from around the country — the show’s largest cast ever — and is set to include guest appearances from Ariana Grande, Janelle Monáe and other celebrities.BOYS IN BLUE 8 p.m. on Showtime. In this four-part documentary series, the filmmaker Peter Berg (who brought “Friday Night Lights” to television) follows a high school football team in Minneapolis after the 2020 killing of George Floyd. The students had a unique and potent experience of that moment: Their team is mentored by Minneapolis police officers. Berg focuses on the tensions and conversations between players and officers.SaturdayPedro Pascal, left, and Nicolas Cage in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.”Katalin Vermes/LionsgateTHE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT (2022) 9 p.m. on Starz. Nicolas Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself in this action comedy, which has its tongue stuck so solidly in its cheek that it would be hard to say “I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence.” The plot, such as it is, involves Cage attending the birthday party of a mega-rich fan (Pedro Pascal). “It’s another Nicolas Cage joint, a romp, a showcase, an eager-to-please ode to him in all his sui generis Caginess,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. “That’s the idea, at any rate. Mostly, though, it is a single joke sustained for 106 minutes, amid many rapid tone shifts, mood swings and set changes.”SundayAlexandra Daddario in “Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches.”AMCANNE RICE’S MAYFAIR WITCHES 9 p.m. on AMC. The novelist Anne Rice’s “Lives of the Mayfair Witches” book trilogy — “The Witching Hour” (1990), “Lasher” (1993) and “Taltos” (1994) — gets a TV adaptation with this new show, which casts Alexandra Daddario as Dr. Rowan Fielding, a neurosurgeon who learns that she is a descendant of a family of witches haunted by a menacing force. If “neurosurgeon” sounds like surprisingly scientific territory for a novelist whose primary interest lies in the supernatural, consider this point that Rice made in an interview with The Times in 2021, shortly before her death. “I think some might be surprised by the sheer volume of science writing I own,” Rice said. “When you invent alternate worlds and supernatural cosmologies, it can be incredibly inspiring to read about how little we still know about the underlying fabric of the universe.” More

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      Robert Caro Relaxes by Listening to People Drum in Central Park

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      The biographer and subject of the documentary “Turn Every Page” talks about his loyalty to the Giants and the Knicks, Zooming with classmates and falling under the spell of Captain Hornblower.When the filmmaker Lizzie Gottlieb approached Robert Caro about a documentary on the relationship between him and his editor, Robert Gottlieb, Caro didn’t want to do it. He nonetheless found it insulting when Robert, Lizzie’s father, didn’t want to do it either.That’s just the nature of their relationship.But she persisted. And eventually Caro, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and her father opened their inner sanctum for “Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb,” about the dynamic, contentious half-century collaboration behind “The Power Broker,” the Zoom-bookshelf must-have about the urban planner Robert Moses, and “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” whose fifth volume Caro has been working on for about a decade.“Why was I reluctant?” Caro, 87, asked in a video call from his orderly West 69th Street office.“We’ve worked out a way of working together,” he said. “It’s two people who are, I suppose, both determined that they stand behind their ideals so firmly that they didn’t want the public to see what that was like.”What indeed. There was the “terrible situation” when Gottlieb, now 91, insisted that 350,000 words be excised from “The Power Broker,” including the chapter that Caro still thinks is about the best he’s written. The quarrels about semicolons that Gottlieb wanted removed and Caro felt should stay, that made Caro wonder, “Why am I doing this?” The editorial comments, so offensive to Caro, that in another age would have warranted a duel.“At the same time, I know that he’s going to support things that maybe nobody else would support,” Caro said, like allowing a three-book series to expand to five and finding him financing through the lean years. “To say that’s invaluable is to slight how wonderful it is to have someone like that behind you.”The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies, including Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett, rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.From their initial meeting through their arguments, there was always this: “At the end, we’re both talking about the writing on the same level,” Caro said of the editor he now considers a friend. “That’s the reason I picked him in the first place.”Caro, in writing, expanded on his 10 cultural necessities, which include Trollope, typewriter ribbons and the Knicks. And the Giants. These are edited excerpts.1. The Photograph of the Very Moment My Wife and I Met For reasons too complicated to explain here, a photographer was following me around taking pictures of me at a dance at Princeton in 1956. Ina, whom I had never met, came dancing by with her date. “Let’s take a picture of me with her,” I told the photographer, and cut in on her. The photograph was taken, and it sits on a bookshelf in our apartment to this day. It is a bit cracked and fragile, but it is so precious to me that I am afraid to take it out of its frame so it can be restored.2. My Typewriters I write my books not on a computer but on a Smith Corona Electra 210. They stopped manufacturing them about 30 years ago, but I have accumulated some. You need spares because when a part breaks on the one you’re using, you have to cannibalize the part from another one. When I have a book coming out, and newspaper profiles mention that I use them, people send me their old ones that were stored away years ago. Thanks to this generosity, I had 14 of them three years ago. I’m down to 11 already.3. My Typewriter Ribbons Harder and harder to get. And I like cotton ribbons, not the customary nylon, very heavily inked. That way, the words you’re typing are bolder and blacker. When you’ve typed the same page over many times, the words stop having an impact, and having them bold and black helps.4. My Shack In the woods behind my house on Long Island — maybe 70 yards in — is a 15 by 20 foot garden shed with a high pointed roof. It sits on a foundation of cinder blocks. That is where I write in the summer. The walls and ceiling are bare unpainted wood, and there is nothing in the shed but my desk, a filing cabinet, two little bookshelves, an air-conditioner, and, of course, nailed to one wall, a corkboard. I bought it 23 years ago. When we arrive at the house at the beginning of each summer, I run over to the shack to see if there has been a leak in the roof during the winter, and there never has. Unless there is a special reason, I don’t bring my cellphone there. I pin the pages of my outline to the corkboard, and I’m ready to go. It is my favorite place on earth.5. The New York Giants Despite everything.6. The New York Knicks Despite everything.7. Zoom Sessions With Horace Mann Classmates For some years we did it in person, in a restaurant, but now one of us has moved to another city, so we Zoom. We do it every four or five weeks. We’ve known each other since we were 11 or 12. We’re older now.8. My First Edition of Trollope My publisher, Sonny Mehta, gave this to me as a gift to celebrate the occasion of my having been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. It’s a set of Trollope’s novels called the “Chronicles of Barsetshire.” I love Trollope and particularly those novels, as Sonny knew, and this set is the first collected edition of those works, published in 1887.9. My Bound Volumes of the Captain Hornblower Series When I was a boy, I was in the spell of those seven books. I would take them out of the public library branch at Broadway and 99th Street and sit down on the steps outside and start reading; I couldn’t wait until I got home. One year, Ina got me the perfect present. She had them bound in a naval blue binding with anchors and naval devices in gold on the spines. Every time I glance at my bookshelf and see them, I start remembering favorite scenes, sometimes finding to my surprise that I am reciting the scene, without having opened the book.10. Sundays in Central Park In the afternoons, after work, Ina and I walk in at the 69th Street entrance. Pedaling or jogging along the drive are human beings of every race and color. To the right is the Sheep Meadow, a vast space, really: 15 acres. And on summer Sundays, it seems like every square foot of those acres contains people — families, touch footballers, picnickers, etc., etc. To the left are people in immaculate white outfits. English lawn bowlers. Keep going: roller skaters gyrating gracefully or wildly to disco music. Keep going: seated on a bench, a line of drummers, generally 10 or 11 of them. Their drumming almost hypnotizes me; I can sit there for an hour listening to them. Somehow it drums the tension from writing right out of me. More

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      Advice From Pelosi’s Daughter: ‘Every Woman Needs a Paul Pelosi'

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      Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, a multimillionaire venture capitalist recovering from a brutal attack, has long taken care of the couple’s “business of living,’’ including shopping for the speaker’s clothes.WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was glued to CNN the night after the 2020 election, while her husband, Paul Pelosi, sat nearby unwrapping a package.“What is that?” she asked him in a scene from the new HBO documentary, “Pelosi in the House,” directed by their daughter Alexandra Pelosi.“Dish towels,” Mr. Pelosi responded with a hint of irony as he popped the bubble packing. Ms. Pelosi smiled and then turned her attention back to the election coverage.It was just one instance of a dynamic on display throughout the film: Mr. Pelosi, who was brutally attacked at the couple’s San Francisco home by an assailant who was said to have been targeting the speaker, takes care of what their family refers to as the “business of living.” That leaves his wife, who will step down as speaker when Republicans assume the House majority on Jan. 3, free to focus on her work.It is the kind of relationship that women in politics rarely talk about, but can sometimes help make the difference between success and failure: a partner willing to take on the mundane tasks and supportive role that traditionally fell to political wives. And although the Pelosis are wealthy and can get all the household help they need, the documentary captures that being a political spouse can mean simply showing up, and then standing off to the side.Throughout the film, as Ms. Pelosi does business on the phone with Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Chuck Schumer or Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was then a presidential candidate, Mr. Pelosi, 82, a multimillionaire businessman who founded a venture capital investment firm, is often in the same room dealing with the day-to-day necessities of their lives.In one scene, Ms. Pelosi was in her pajamas strategizing on a call with Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, about the first impeachment of President Donald J. Trump while Mr. Pelosi, sitting across from her, was on his cellphone dealing with a contractor trying to access their San Francisco home to fix a broken shower.A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Who Is George Santos?: The G.O.P. congressman-elect from New York says he’s the “embodiment of the American dream.” But his résumé appears to be mostly fiction.McCarthy’s Fraught Speaker Bid: Representative Kevin McCarthy has so far been unable to quash a mini-revolt on the right that threatens to imperil his effort to secure the top House job.The G.O.P.’s Fringe: Three incoming congressmen attended a gala that drew white nationalists and conspiracy theorists, raising questions about the influence of extremists on the new Republican-led House.Kyrsten Sinema: The Arizona senator said that she would leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent, just days after the Democrats secured an expanded majority in the Senate.“I don’t know what happened to that key,” Mr. Pelosi said, using an expletive.Paul and Nancy Pelosi met as college students while taking a summer class at Georgetown University in 1961. They married two years later and had five children in six years. Ms. Pelosi spent her early years in the marriage as a stay-at-home San Francisco mother and did not run for Congress until she was in her 40s. What followed was nothing that Mr. Pelosi ever pictured for his wife, or his family, according to his daughter.“I don’t think this is what he signed up for in 1987,” Alexandra Pelosi said in an interview, referring to the year Ms. Pelosi was first elected to Congress. “He just had to get over it.”The couple had five children in six years.Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesMr. Pelosi, according to his daughter, never caught the political bug. He forbids political talk at the dinner table. But over the years he has been at his wife’s side at her big political moments, and has taken on many of the duties of the homemaker. He does the dishes, deals with contractors, pays the bills and shops for Ms. Pelosi’s clothes.“She’s never ordered dish towels in her life,” Alexandra Pelosi said. “That’s what he’s been doing forever. He does the shopping for her, from the dish towels to the Armani dress.’’“He’s got Armani on speed dial,’’ she added, referring to the Italian designer Giorgio Armani, one of the speaker’s favorites. “He’s the full-service husband.”Ms. Pelosi had more to say: “The dress she wore to the state dinner; he ordered it for her, and he sent my sister to go try it on.” (Ms. Pelosi was referring to a gold sequin gown by another Italian designer, Giambattista Valli, that her mother wore to a White House state dinner early this month for President Emmanuel Macron of France.)The documentary, focused on Ms. Pelosi’s rise and professional accomplishments, offers glimpses into how a marriage to a supportive spouse helps create the space for a woman’s work — in her case, operating years as the most powerful political force in the Democratic Party in recent years.Other than Hillary Clinton, few women in politics have risen to Ms. Pelosi’s stature, and there are not many male spouses like her husband. Former President Bill Clinton played the role of supportive spouse during Mrs. Clinton’s two presidential campaigns, but after he had already had his turn.Doug Emhoff has assumed a supporting role to Vice President Kamala Harris, but that has also meant becoming a public figure in his own right. Mr. Pelosi never wanted anything close to that.“He’s a private person with a private life with a very interesting collection of friends, including Republicans,” Alexandra Pelosi said. “He didn’t sign up for this life.”But, she said, he has made it work. “Every woman needs a Paul Pelosi.’’The Pelosis met in 1961, while taking a summer class at Georgetown University. Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn one scene in the documentary, Mr. Pelosi was scraping breakfast dishes in a robe while his wife spoke on the phone to Mr. Pence. At one point, she put herself on mute and blew kisses at her husband.In a scene shot during the 2020 presidential campaign, Ms. Pelosi was on the phone with Mr. Biden advising him “don’t go too far to the left.” Mr. Pelosi was sitting next to her, reading his iPad, only half paying attention to his wife’s conversation.Mr. Pelosi appeared at ease in his supporting character role.“Are you in line to get a picture with the speaker?” his daughter shouted at him from behind the camera at a gathering at the U.S. Capitol ahead of one of Mr. Trump’s State of the Union addresses, while Ms. Pelosi was working a photo line.“Oh I am,” he joked.The following year, there he was again, sitting and snacking while Ms. Pelosi worked the room.“I heard Paul Pelosi was here,” his daughter joked.“I just came for the pistachios,” he said.As Ms. Pelosi prepared to enter the House chamber — where she would eventually tear up Mr. Trump’s speech and dismiss it as a “manifesto of mistruths” — her husband was with her in her office offering moral support.“You look great, hon,” Mr. Pelosi told her.Despite his appearances in the documentary, Mr. Pelosi is not always at the speaker’s side, including in May, when he was in a car accident in Napa County, Calif., and afterward pleaded guilty to a single count of driving under the influence of alcohol. Ms. Pelosi was across the country, preparing to deliver a commencement address at Brown University.“He’s there for the days that matter,” Alexandra Pelosi said. “It’s really just because she says you have to come. These kinds of people need a family to be there for support on days that matter.”In October, Mr. Pelosi was beaten with a hammer at the couple’s San Francisco home by an assailant who was said to have been targeting the speaker. He suffered major head injuries, but has appeared in recent days by Ms. Pelosi’s side, including her portrait unveiling at the Capitol and at the Kennedy Center Honors celebration.Still, his daughter said he was on a long road to recovery. “He has good days and bad days,” she said, noting that he has post-traumatic stress and tires quickly.The attack on the man who has been a quiet pillar of the Pelosi family life has taken a toll on all of them. The speaker told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a recent interview that “for me this is really the hard part because Paul was not the target, and he’s the one who is paying the price.”“He was not looking for Paul, he was looking for me,” she added.His daughter said one of the most uncomfortable parts of the ordeal has been the glare of the public spotlight on a person who has tried to avoid it.“He’s remained out of the limelight as much as he could,” she said. “He almost got to the end without anyone knowing who he was.” More

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      ‘Turn Every Page’ Review: It’s Not Done Yet

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      This affectionate documentary about the writer Robert Caro and the editor Robert Gottlieb sets out to shed light on their 50 years of collaboration.Don’t ask Robert Caro when he’s going to finish his next Lyndon Johnson book. In the documentary “Turn Every Page — The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb,” that question becomes almost a running joke. “I don’t think it does me any good to think about that,” Caro, now 87, says of the possibility that he might not live to finish the final book of his five-volume Johnson biography. “I don’t want to rush it.”He could write more quickly, he says. He could leave things out, and no one would know. But his process is his process, and he sees it as crucial to having his work endure.Not asking when he’ll finish is also, according to an anecdote from Caro, the policy of Robert Gottlieb, who started as Caro’s editor with “The Power Broker” (1974), the author’s influential biography of Robert Moses, and has stuck with him for roughly 50 years. “I would love to be able to hang up my pencil on the last page of the last volume of his Lyndon Johnson,” Gottlieb, now 91, says in the film.“Turn Every Page,” directed by Gottlieb’s daughter, Lizzie, sets out to illuminate a working relationship that both men believe should stay private; that’s part of the trust between an author and an editor. To an extent, they succeed in hiding, or at least in not making news. Many stories here, about their fights over punctuation or about how they chose Johnson as a subject, have surfaced before, including in Charles McGrath’s 2012 look at both men for The New York Times Magazine.Caro, understandably, is self-conscious about having his progress recorded. Early on, he gives Lizzie Gottlieb permission to film two pages with tallies of how many words he’s written and then quickly changes his mind, hiding them from view. We get to see the precariously overstuffed cabinet above his refrigerator in which he shoves carbon copies after each day’s work. He still writes in longhand and on a typewriter; at one point, the camera catches sight of an index card at his desk that reads, “The only thing that matters is what is on this page.” When Lizzie Gottlieb succeeds, finally, in getting permission to film Caro and her father working together, there is a condition: She cannot record sound.Even these small glimpses into Caro’s methods and compulsive revisions are bound to induce anxiety in anyone who has ever tried to finish a piece of writing. The idea that he and Robert Gottlieb, who have edited thousands of pages together, still meet prepared to go to war over semicolons defies any rational partitioning of time. Gottlieb says that he worked on “The Power Broker” for a year, longer than most other books he has edited, but that still seems short considering they cut one-third of it, and it still runs almost 1,200 pages in paperback.“Turn Every Page” is one step away from turning into a Herzogian monument to obsession or plunging into crazed psychodrama. Instead, it is merely a great profile, filled with wit, affection and detailed stories of how the books came to be. While the film is nominally a dual portrait, the overall impression is that Lizzie Gottlieb has gravitated ever so slightly toward the Caro mystique, which might be inevitable. (Her father, as an editor, is supposed to work more invisibly.)She may even have captured another of Caro’s great revelations in the making. At the L.B.J. Presidential Library, she films Caro researching alongside his wife, Ina. He tells Lizzie Gottlieb about rereading a telegram that he had passed over decades earlier. “It has a great significance,” he says.The tantalizing “Turn Every Page” doesn’t reveal what that significance is. But it makes waiting that much harder.Turn Every Page — The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert GottliebRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Broadway Rising’ Review: Surviving the Pandemic

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      Stakeholders including Patti LuPone and Lynn Nottage share their real-time reactions to New York theater’s shutdown and reopening in Amy Rice’s documentary.When the pandemic halted New York theater in March 2020, effectively putting an art form on ice, it was a potent sign that the world was not well. Following the timeline of the shutdown and recovery, Amy Rice’s upbeat documentary “Broadway Rising” surveys an impressive array of voices across the industry to track how it survived and regrouped. It’s like an extended backstage chronicle, except that people didn’t know when or how the show would go on.In a churn of behind-the-scenes vérité and sit-down interviews (plus other to-camera commentary), we see performers, costumers, producers, musicians, playwrights and even a well-liked usher go through the coronavirus pandemic’s stages of grief. The subjects are fearful and anxious, for themselves and others, as figures including the actress Patti LuPone and the usher worry aloud about challenges that are more than a matter of employment. Death hits home: Highlighted here are the playwright Terrence McNally, the husband of the producer Tom Kirdahy (who features prominently in the film), and the actor Nick Cordero.The movie underlines the solidarity and gumption that are ideally part of theater culture, even as feelings of resilience and unease rub shoulders: The playwright Lynn Nottage wonders about losing opportunities, while Adam Perry, an injured dancer who survived the coronavirus, pursues work in making floral arrangements.But despite the diligent quantity of viewpoints, the sameness of the tone, sometimes-breezy editing and looping score produce a bland sensation as the movie soldiers on to the September 2021 reopening of theaters. It can’t fail to trigger shudders of recognition as well as feelings of release, but the filmmaking lacks a certain drama.Broadway RisingRated PG-13 for some language and themes. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Streaming on demand. More

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      ‘Stars at Noon,’ ‘Vortex’ and More of This Year’s Streaming Gems

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      A look back at some of the finest under-the-radar streaming picks of the year.December is upon us, prompting a glut of year-end best-of lists from film critics, awards-giving bodies and various experts. Most of those feature titles you might not have seen, and some you haven’t even heard of. In that year-end wrap-up spirit, this month’s guide to the hidden gems of your subscription streaming services consists solely of films released in the United States during the past calendar year. Check out some obscurities, and impress your friends and colleagues at holiday parties.‘Stars at Noon’Stream it on Hulu.Claire Denis’s erotic drama is immersed in the worlds of journalism, espionage and geopolitics, but the real subject is one of her standbys: the sexual dynamics between men and women, and the transactional nature therein. The participants here are Trish (Margaret Qualley), an underemployed American journalist in Nicaragua who’s doing a bit of sex work as a side hustle, and Daniel (Joe Alwyn), a British businessman who’s both buying and selling. Denis keenly observes how the power shifts between them, and rarely without a struggle; their dialogue scenes have a cockeyed unpredictability, particularly since one or both is always in a state of desperation. Alwyn is fine, good even, but Qualley is a revelation; she is, by turns, funny, sexy, savvy and broken.‘Vortex’Stream it on Mubi.The extremist Argentine-French filmmaker Gaspar Noé’s most recent effort is his gentlest, though only because he’s best known for provocations like “Irreversible,” “Enter the Void” and “Climax.” Here, he tells the story of a long-married couple (played by the Italian filmmaker Dario Argento and the French actress Françoise Lebrun) and how their idyllic retirement is ripped apart by her increasingly debilitating dementia. It sounds not unlike Michael Haneke’s devastating “Amour,” a similarly dour tale of aging and mortality, but Noé inserts an additional visual dimension: He plays out the events in split-screen, with her separative frame a devastating visualization of her mental isolation — a stylistic flourish that makes this harrowing drama all the more affecting.The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.Rian Johnson:  The “Glass Onion” director explains the streaming plan for his “Knives Out” franchise.‘The Survivor’Stream it on HBO Max.Once upon a time, a Barry Levinson-directed feature based on a true story, with an all-star cast and successful debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, would have been a shoo-in for Oscar consideration. In today’s peculiar marketplace, it’s bought up by HBO only to never be seen again. But this is a stellar historical drama, with Ben Foster in fine form (both dramatically and athletically) as Harry Haft, an Auschwitz captive who survived his time there by boxing, and later used those skills to make a career as a boxer in America. The fight scenes are brutal, the dramatic stretches wrenching, and Levinson orchestrates his first-rate cast with aplomb.‘Elesin Olba: The King’s Horseman’Stream it on Netflix.In 1943, in the region of Africa now known as Nigeria, the longstanding tradition of the tribal king’s horseman committing ritual suicide after the death of the king (and thus following him into the afterlife) was prevented by British colonialists. That true event inspired Wole Soyinka’s venerable play “Death and the King’s Horseman,” which was adapted into this absorbing feature film by the Nigerian novelist, playwright and filmmaker Biyi Bandele (who died just before its premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival). The portraiture of customs and rituals is fascinating, and the Brits are properly villainous. But the film truly comes alive in its closing scenes, a thought-provoking and thoughtful contemplation of mortality and responsibility.‘Navalny’Stream it on HBO Max.Between interviews for Daniel Roher’s documentary, but on a hot mic, the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny tells a friend, “He’s filming it all for the movie he’s gonna release if I get whacked.” That candor and fearlessness was part of what made Navalny a thorn in the side of Putin’s Kremlin, and as such, he was the target of a likely assassination attempt by poisoning in 2020. Roher’s cameras follow Navalny as he recovers, prepares to return to Russia and participates in an independent investigation of the poisoning, resulting in an explosive, accidental confession by one of the perpetrators. Roher carefully avoids outright hagiography (via evenhanded discussion of Navalny’s image and ethics), using his access and materials to assemble a first-rate, though nonfiction, political thriller.‘My Old School’Stream it on Hulu.The story of a supposedly 17-year-old secondary school student who was revealed, after over a year in classes, to be a 32-year-old former student caused a sensation in Scotland (where it occurred) and across Europe — so much so that it was slated to be adapted into a feature film, with the actor Alan Cumming in the leading role. That film was never made, but now the story has become a documentary, and since the film’s subject would consent only to an audio interview, Cumming appears on camera to lip-sync the man’s words. (Got that?) The rest of the tall tale is told via animation, archival footage and alternately funny and contemplative contemporary interviews with the classmates of “Brandon Lee,” who attempt to puzzle out why they were so easily fooled, and (in the stellar closing sections) how well they remember the entire affair. The director Jono McLeod tells the story straight, as they all heard it and as “Lee” told it, which makes for a wild, twisty ride indeed.‘Free Chol Soo Lee’Stream it on Mubi.Everybody loves the story of an innocent man, wrongfully accused and then rightfully freed, and it’s been a standby of documentary cinema since (at least) “The Thin Blue Line.” Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s film begins as that movie, relating how Chol Soo Lee was convicted and imprisoned for a murder in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1973, based on scant evidence and flimsy eyewitness testimony, only to become a common cause for the Korean American community until he was finally freed more than a decade later. But that’s only part of the story. With sensitivity and nuance, the filmmakers follow Lee’s troubled post-prison journey, reminding us that happy endings are often temporary. A riveting and often heartbreaking tale. More

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      ‘The Super 8 Years’ Review: Annie Ernaux’s Celluloid Memories

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      In this wistful movie, the French writer and Nobel laureate revisits her life with help from her son, who’s also the director.The film’s images have faded, but the memories they’ve stirred up are vivid and full of feeling. In one shot, a tiny boy pushes a big wheelbarrow. In another, an old man and woman pose with the awkwardness of an earlier generation that never learned how to look at ease before any camera. And then there is the vision of the young woman at a desk, a pen resting in one hand, who gazes at the camera with a tight, unwelcoming smile. I like to think that she’s impatient to get back to the papers on the desk, to get back to her writing and to herself.The woman — the French writer Annie Ernaux, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in October — doesn’t smile much in “The Super 8 Years,” a wistful memory movie that she made with her son David Ernaux-Briot. On Dec. 7, in her Nobel Prize lecture, Ernaux spoke about her roots in provincial France, her love of books and desire to write, a yearning that was thwarted by her position as a woman. “Married with two children,” she said, “a teaching position and full responsibility for household affairs, each day I moved further and further away from writing and my promise to avenge my people.”You see that woman now and again in “The Super 8 Years,” which was made before she became a Nobel laureate — what timing! Directed by Ernaux-Briot, and written and narrated by Ernaux, it consists of somewhat degraded-looking home movies from the early 1970s to the early ’80s. In the winter of 1972, as Ernaux explains in voice-over, she and her husband, Philippe Ernaux, bought a Bell & Howell Super 8 camera and projector. Years later, she and Ernaux-Briot revisited these fragile mementos and, with some deft editing, sound effects and music (the original material is silent), created this short, potent, quietly elegiac feature.The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.Rian Johnson:  The “Glass Onion” director explains the streaming plan for his “Knives Out” franchise.For Ernaux and her husband, the Super 8 camera was “the ultimate desired object,” more coveted than a dishwasher or even a color television. “Film truly captured life and people,” Ernaux explains, though how it captured life and people was complicated. That’s evident the first time you see the younger Ernaux in “The Super 8 Years” entering a house while carrying two cardboard boxes. She’s wearing a dark, hooded coat and an awkward, inscrutable smile, as if she were ill at ease about being (caught) on camera. Or maybe she’s embarrassed by (or for) Philippe, who, as Ernaux explains, shot most of the home movies.Ernaux writes about this image and its complicated smile in her exquisite 2008 memoir “The Years,” which works as a companion piece to “The Super 8 Years.” In her book, Ernaux asserts that there is “something ascetic and sad, or disenchanted” about her younger self’s expression in this scene, adding that her smile lacks spontaneity. I instead see shyness or just self-consciousness, especially in how she looks at the camera only to cast her eyes downward. But this isn’t my memory, and as Ernaux writes in “The Years,” one of the greatest ways to foster self-knowledge is “a person’s ability to discern how they view the past.”For a time, Super 8 was a way for many to view a present that would soon be the past. Introduced by Kodak in 1965, the film format was a significant player in the moving-image revolution that swept the 20th century, turning amateurs (who could afford it) into moviemakers and everyday life into a global celluloid archive. This archival impulse dovetails with Ernaux’s approach in “The Years,” which is partly organized around photos of her from different eras that prompt cascades of words about her life, her family, its town, the region, the country and beyond. A similar impulse shapes “The Super 8 Years,” in which Ernaux insistently tethers images of her former domestic life, with its gentle and agonized ebb and flow, to larger world affairs, to questions of feminism and other liberation struggles.Instructively for a memoir, Ernaux almost entirely avoids using “I” in “The Years,” preferring “we” and often referring to herself as “she.” In “The Super 8 Years,” the “we” usually seems to mean her family, and she switches pronouns freely as if to suggest the mutability of identity. In one section about a vacation in Morocco, Ernaux says, “I thought of the finished manuscript in my desk drawer.” Soon, though, over images from Germany, she refers to her younger self like a friend. “She is 33 and doesn’t yet know,” Ernaux says, that the manuscript she’s submitted “will be published as ‘Cleaned Out,’” referring to her 1974 debut novel.At one point in “The Super 8 Years,” Ernaux ponders what story is being told in this “parade of images” as the movie cuts from a child to her and then to exploding fireworks. Words were needed, she continues, to give meaning to these “snippets of family life invisibly recorded inside the history of the era.” This reminds me of her observation in “The Years” that memory never stops. “It pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.” Memory is also, I think, one reason we watch movies like this, which with its lapidary narration and melancholic images — with its laughing children, its difficult smiles and its ghosts — movingly pairs you with Ernaux and with the world that she has so brilliantly made.The Super 8 YearsNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour. In theaters. More