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      Michael Batayeh, Comedian and ‘Breaking Bad’ Actor, Dies at 52

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      Mr. Batayeh starred in three episodes of the Emmy-winning series and performed stand-up comedy.Michael Batayeh, an actor best known for his brief role in the Emmy-winning series “Breaking Bad” and a comedian who was popular in the Arab-American community, died at his home in Ypsilanti, Mich. He was 52.His sister Ida Vergollo said he died on June 1 in his sleep after a heart attack. A coroner later found issues with his heart, she said.Mr. Batayeh appeared in “Breaking Bad” as Dennis Markowski, the steady manager of a laundromat that was a front for a meth lab. The character was killed after he showed interest in speaking to the Drug Enforcement Administration in exchange for immunity.As a comedian, Mr. Batayeh performed in major clubs in New York City and Los Angeles, as well as around the country and internationally.He also had credits on several popular television series, including “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “The Bernie Mac Show” and “Boy Meets World.”Mr. Batayeh’s role as a cabdriver on “Everybody Loves Raymond” in 1998 signaled to his family that he had arrived as an entertainer, according to Ms. Vergollo, “because that’s when my dad first saw his last name on TV.” She said, “My dad was so proud of him and let him know that.”Michael Anthony Batayeh was born on Dec. 27, 1970, in Detroit, the seventh child of Abraham Batayeh, a Ford factory worker, and Victoria (Dababneh) Batayeh.The couple immigrated to the United States from Jordan in 1955. Michael Batayeh attended Wayne State University for three years before dropping out and moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the arts and start his own comedy troupe with a friend.“He was actually made to be a performer since he was very, very young,” said Ms. Vergollo, who recalled that her brother began playing the tabla, a pair of hand drums, at 5 years old and continued throughout his adult life.“My dad used to drag him up onstage at all the weddings,” she said.Mr. Batayeh is survived by his sisters Ida Vergollo, Diane Batayeh-Ricketts, MaryAnn Joseph, Madeline Sherman and Theresa Aquino. His eldest sister, Jeannie Batayeh, died from cancer in 2016.Mr. Batayeh often used his family as fodder for comedy. “He made fun of us a lot,” Ms. Vergollo said.And an affinity for accents made him popular in the Arab-American community, said Ms. Vergollo, who called him “so spot on.”At the invitation of the Jordanian royal family, his sisters said, he performed at a comedy festival in Amman, Jordan’s capital. He was also featured in a comedy special for Showtime Arabia.The family is asking for memorial contributions to an organization that provides recreation and mentoring programs for youth in southwest Detroit.“He would voice to us how important it was and how good he felt when he went back home and talked to kids or mentored people who wanted to start out,” Ms. Vergollo said. She noted that Mr. Batayeh moved back to Michigan from California permanently in 2016 when his sister Jeannie was ill, but would travel back and forth for work.“He cared about his community and wanted to give back,” she said, “and that’s the type of person he was.” More

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      Jenny Lewis Keeps Finding the Magic

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      Jenny Lewis didn’t mean to wind up with the marimba.But for the last year, a vintage percussion instrument has occupied pride of place in the singer-songwriter’s forest green home studio. She inherited it from her godfather, Jerry Cohen, a music editor for TV and movies and an amateur musician, who died suddenly last spring. He was a surrogate dad to her, the kind who surreptitiously bought Hanukkah presents when money was tight in her household, and introduced her to jazz records when she was 10. She was the only person in the room with him when he passed away.“He was my mentor and my best friend and the most Jewish of all people in my life,” she said. “Jerry would want me to get lessons on the marimba.”Lewis, the 47-year-old indie artist whose country-rock troubadour style and evocative lyricism has earned her comparisons to songwriting greats from Nashville’s Music Row to Laurel Canyon, has suffered a lot of loss lately. Her mother’s death, in 2017, was the backdrop for her last album, “On the Line,” in 2019. Now, after losing Cohen and another mentor, the album designer and her “rock ’n’ roll dad” Gary Burden, there is “Joy’All,” an album out June 9 that grapples with aging, life cycles and romantic (im)possibility and yet somehow feels vivacious.Lewis inherited the marimba from her godfather, Jerry Cohen, a music editor for TV and movies and amateur musician, who died suddenly last spring.Ariel Fisher for The New York Times“My 40s are kicking my ass,” she sings on the third track over peppy acoustic guitars, “and handing them to me in a margarita glass.” The song is called “Puppy and a Truck,” her latest — and perhaps most lasting — prescription for happiness; she scored them both. “Having survived this moment, I felt like it was important to project something joyful,” she said.The dog, Bobby Rhubarb, a shiny black cockapoo, greeted me with a waist-high leap when I visited Lewis recently at her home at the end of a wildflower-lined canyon road in the San Fernando Valley. The house is called Mint Chip — there’s an ice cream cone etched in stained glass by the garage — and Lewis acquired it after promising to maintain the whimsical touches that the Disney animator who built it in the 1950s installed. It attracts the fantastical too: during the pandemic, Lewis said, she discovered a baby squirrel had been sneaking in and hiding acorns under her pillow.There is more than a little magic to her life. It’s in the way Lewis amplifies the space around her (she decked out that truck, a Chevy Colorado, with ersatz Gucci seat covers) and even the way she made it out of a career as a child actor to succeed in another artistic universe.“She’s a unicorn,” said Soleil Moon Frye, her fellow child star (“Punky Brewster”) and a friend for decades. Even as a preteen, Lewis had musical skills, said Moon Frye, who documented their Hollywood crew’s adolescence in home movies, released as the 2021 documentary “Kid 90.” “We would memorize these hip-hop songs — she was always so good at rapping.”Though she’s pegged as a country-tinged folk rock songwriter, Lewis’s keystone is still hip-hop, reggae, soul and funk — “finding the story in rap-style verses and picking up an acoustic guitar, and kind of marrying the two worlds,” she said. A printout of the Wikipedia entry for “3 Feet High and Rising,” the landmark album by De La Soul, rested on the music stand in her studio; she was paging through it to understand all the samples they had used.Though she’s pegged as a country-tinged folk rock songwriter, her references for “Joy’All” included Tracy Chapman, Portishead and Frank Ocean.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesHer references for “Joy’All” included Tracy Chapman, whose conversational delivery she admires, Portishead and Frank Ocean. About half of the tracks for the LP were created over two years in Los Angeles. The rest she made in Nashville, where she has also had a home since 2017. It’s her fifth studio album as a solo artist — she started out in popular indie bands, Rilo Kiley and the Postal Service — and her first release on Blue Note Records, the storied jazz label. (After her own tour, she’ll be joining the Postal Service on the road this fall.)Dave Cobb, the Nashville producer (Brandi Carlile, John Prine, Chris Stapleton) who worked on the album, was awe-struck by her ease and perennial good moods. “If you don’t like Jenny Lewis, you don’t like people,” he said. Their sessions, tracking instruments like pedal steel and Mellotron, along with birdsong from Lewis’s Nashville backyard, flowed easily. “To say she led is absolute, because we all played to her,” he said, adding: “Everything she writes about is true. She literally showed up every day with the puppy and her truck.”She has the openness of someone who has spent a lifetime cheerfully talking about herself, and the staggeringly eccentric stories of a showbiz veteran. Sitting on the midnight blue couch in her minimalist living room, Lewis, in a sweatshirt, sunset-hued corduroys and a single gold hoop earring inscribed with her last name, touched on being Jewish; the spiritual guru Ram Dass; the female Elvis impersonator who was her childhood babysitter; the time her mother convinced Lucille Ball to have a sitcom wrap party in their ramshackle house (“Lucy walks in, and she goes, ‘What a dump!’”); and the swap meet in Atlanta where she buys knockoff Gucci socks by the armful. “I would never buy a real Gucci sock — that’s so silly,” she said.Telling stories about Cohen, she cried. When she was a child, he took her to his job on the Universal Studios lot and let her draw and animate her own movies using giant old film machines. Being with him when he died “was probably like the most important moment of my whole life,” she said.Lewis’s parents, itinerant lounge musicians, split when she was a toddler. Her acting career in the ’80s changed the family’s fortunes, for a time, but her mother’s drug addiction and instability outpaced her sitcom earnings. She was estranged from her parents for decades, then reconciled with each late in their lives. Her father’s bass harmonica sits on a stand on her mantel.“On my dad’s deathbed, he basically was like, ‘learn musical theory,’” she said. “So there has been this pressure, from my people, to do better and learn more.”Jess Wolfe, one half of the duo Lucius, befriended Lewis and sings backup on “Joy’All.” “I really understand the need for trying to lift yourself up through your art and hoping that it can do the same for other people — she did that, in her cool, effortless Jenny Lewis kind of way,” Wolfe said.“She’s always had to figure it out and take care of herself,” she added. “She is incredibly resourceful and incredibly clever about how to do something, effectively, efficiently and affordably. Truly, I’m always blown away by her in that sense — I will always feel creative when I’m around her.”“Everything she writes about is true. She literally showed up every day with the puppy and her truck,” the producer Dave Cobb said.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesAt age 40, after Lewis separated from her longtime partner, the musician Johnathan Rice, she moved to New York for the first time, realizing a teenage ambition. She lived in her pal Annie Clark’s (St. Vincent) apartment for two years, starting the side project NAF there with some friends. Then came Nashville, where she learned how to two-step at a honky-tonk across from the Ryman Auditorium.In a rehearsal at a space covered in red velvet in Nashville last week, which she shared over a video call, Lewis directed her all-female backing band (she seeks out women for the stage and, for this outing, even has a female tour manager — a relative rarity in the industry, and a first for her). “You guys just pedal on that, and let me do my thing,” she said, as they prepared to sing “Acid Tongue,” the title track off her 2008 solo debut. “Let’s get those ‘oohs,’” she instructed. The harmonies rolled in. “Well done,” she told them. “It’s just feeling confident.”Back in L.A., Lewis had confided that aging as an unfiltered, undoctored music star isn’t easy. “I see myself and I don’t always love it,” she said. “But I’m trying to embrace being a woman in her 40s, and all that has to offer.”She is contentedly single now, though trying out a dating app, and itching to write about it — even, she admitted, enjoying that more.“My life is outrageous,” she said, although her songwriting is not straight autobiography. “But if I’m being honest, I’m in every single line.” More

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      Actor Danny Masterson Found Guilty of Raping 2 Women in Retrial

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      The case against a star of the sitcom “That ’70s Show” drew widespread attention because of accusations that the Church of Scientology had tried to discourage his accusers.A jury in Los Angeles on Wednesday convicted Danny Masterson, the actor best known for his role on the sitcom “That ’70s Show,” of having raped two women in a case that drew widespread attention because of accusations that the Church of Scientology had tried to discourage his accusers.The jury deadlocked on a charge that Masterson had raped a third woman, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said.The mixed verdict came after a jury deadlocked on all three charges in November, resulting in a mistrial. The retrial lasted more than a month, and jurors deliberated for more than a week before finding him guilty of two counts of rape by force or fear.Masterson, 47, was taken into custody after the verdict. He will face up to 30 years to life in state prison when he is sentenced on Aug. 4, the district attorney’s office said.Prosecutors said that Masterson, who played Steven Hyde on “That ’70s Show” from 1998 to 2006, raped three women at his home in the Hollywood Hills between 2001 and 2003. He was charged in 2020 and had pleaded not guilty. A spokeswoman for Masterson’s legal team said the lawyers had no immediate comment after the verdict on Wednesday.The case was closely watched in part because of accusations by two of the women that the Church of Scientology, to which they and Masterson belonged, had discouraged them from reporting the rapes to law enforcement, according to court documents. The church has strongly denied that it pressures victims.Although both trials centered on the same allegations, Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo of Los Angeles Superior Court allowed prosecutors to tell jurors directly in the second trial that Masterson had drugged his three accusers, The Associated Press reported.Prosecutors suggested the possibility of drugging only in the first trial, as they presented testimony that the women felt disoriented and confused after Masterson gave them alcoholic drinks.Masterson’s lawyer, Philip Cohen, had argued that the women’s stories were inconsistent and that there was no physical evidence of drugging and “no evidence of force or violence,” The A.P. reported.“I am experiencing a complex array of emotions — relief, exhaustion, strength, sadness — knowing that my abuser, Danny Masterson, will face accountability for his criminal behavior,” one of Masterson’s accusers, who was identified in court documents only as N. Trout, said in a statement released by a public relations firm for lawyers who are representing her in a lawsuit against Masterson and the Church of Scientology.Another accuser, who was identified in court documents only as Christina B., said in the same statement that she was “devastated” that the jury had deadlocked on the charge that Masterson raped her in 2001 when they were in a relationship.“Despite my disappointment in this outcome, I remain determined to secure justice, including in civil court, where I, along with my co-plaintiffs, will shine a light on how Scientology and other conspirators enabled and sought to cover up Masterson’s monstrous behavior,” she said.According to a trial brief filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office in September, Christina B. had reported the rape to the church’s “ethics officer” or “master at arms,” who told her, “You can’t rape someone that you’re in a relationship with” and “Don’t say that word again.”According to the brief, Masterson raped a third woman, identified only as Jen B., in April 2003 after he gave her a red vodka drink. About 20 or 30 minutes later, she felt “very disoriented,” the brief states.According to the brief, Masterson raped her after she regained consciousness on his bed. She reached for his hair to try to pull him off and tried to push a pillow into his face, the brief states. When Masterson heard a man yelling in the house, he pulled a gun from his night stand and told her not to move or to “say anything,” adding expletives, the brief states.Jen B., after seeking the church’s permission to report the rape, received a written response from the church’s international chief justice that cited a 1965 policy letter regarding “suppressive acts,” the brief states.To her, the response signaled that if she were to report a fellow Scientologist to the police, “I would be declared a suppressive person, and I would be out of my family and friends and everything I have,” the brief states. Still, she reported the rape to law enforcement in June 2004, the document states.N. Trout told her mother and best friend about the rape, but not the church, the brief states.“If you have a legal situation with another member of the church, you may not handle it externally from the church, and it’s very explicit,” she said, according to the brief. She added that she “felt sufficiently intimidated by the repercussions.”The church said in a statement in April that it “has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone, Scientologists or not, to law enforcement.”“Quite the opposite,” the statement said. “Church policy explicitly demands Scientologists abide by all laws of the land.” More

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      in Movies

      Meet Greta Lee, the Star of “Past Lives”

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      She’s known for playing offbeat characters in “Russian Doll,” “High Maintenance” and “Girls,” but Greta Lee is winning raves for her restrained performance in “Past Lives.” It almost didn’t happen.“I’ve played a lot of larger-than-life people,” Greta Lee said. “This is entirely different. I was really attracted to what that could be, and whether or not I could pull it off.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesGreta Lee shines at playing the entrancing oddball, the scene-stealing weirdo you can’t take your eyes off of.Over the years, the actress has channeled Soojin, an entitled, self-absorbed gallerist who thinks she’s poor but isn’t (“Girls”); Hae Won, a nail salon technician who can party with the best of them, in this case, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (“Sisters”); and Maxine, the free spirit on “Russian Doll” caught in an inescapable time loop with her best friend, played by Natasha Lyonne.What Lee hasn’t gotten to play much are characters who are, to use her word, restrained.For many actors, restraint is not necessarily something to strive for. “A lot of times, as performers, we’re fighting this unspoken desire to show you can do something,” she said. “To show that you understand the assignment.”Audiences will get to see a bit more restraint and a lot more of what Lee can do in the A24 drama “Past Lives,” which opens June 2. After years of making the most of small parts, the actress’s talents have long been there to see for anyone with eyeballs, whether she was performing on Broadway (briefly) or in some of TV’s most groundbreaking comedies. All that was needed for Lee to move up was the right role — in this case, her first leading role, one that almost didn’t come her way.In “Past Lives,” she plays Nora, a Korean Canadian playwright who reunites with the childhood sweetheart she left behind in Seoul when her family immigrated 24 years before. The film also stars Teo Yoo (“Love to Hate You”) as Hae Sung, the man who still wonders what might have been, and John Magaro (“Not Fade Away”), as Nora’s husband Arthur, a writer forced to wonder what might have been, too, when Hae Sung comes to New York for a short but affecting visit.Teo Yoo and Lee in “Past Lives.” Initially the roles went to other performers.A24In many ways, Nora is about as far from Lee’s roster of scene-stealing roles as you can imagine: measured and still rather than riotous or offbeat; the humor, when it comes, wry. It’s a breakthrough performance in a film that has already earned rave reviews (The Times described it as “a gorgeous, glowing, aching thing”) after it premiered at Sundance and played the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. The Los Angeles Times called her turn a “career-making performance,” while The Hollywood Reporter singled out the “extraordinary depths” of her portrayal of Nora.“I’ve played a lot of larger-than-life people,” Lee said. “This is entirely different. I was really attracted to what that could be, and whether or not I could pull it off.”The role almost eluded Lee, an experience she related one afternoon in a coffee shop in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. “I felt absolutely certain that it was not going to go my way,” she recalled.IF NORA IS NOTHING LIKE many of Lee’s previous party-girl characters, neither is Lee herself. She’s a mother, for starters, of two young boys with her husband, Russ Armstrong.On set, “Greta is like a Hunter S. Thompson-meets-Fellini character,” Natasha Lyonne said in an interview. “She’s a total original.”And while Lee’s characters can seem infinitely too cool to be seen with you or your friends, she herself isn’t above getting excited about all sorts of things, including how kind and receptive everyone has been about this latest movie of hers. “I’m going to show you,” she said, pulling out her cellphone. She played a tiny clip she had shot on her phone of the blocks-long line at a recent screening of “Past Lives.” “It keeps going! Still going. Still going. Isn’t this completely wild?”Lee, now 40, was born in Los Angeles and spent most of her childhood here. The daughter of Korean immigrants and the oldest of three, she experienced much of her early life as a series of firsts. “I was the first kid to be an American citizen in the family, the first to go to school here, just navigating all these things,” she said. “I always had a burning fire to prove something, either to myself, or to whatever authority figure there was in my life.”Growing up, she loved sports (“there are Olympic wrestlers on my dad’s side”) and musical performance. She played the piano, studied opera, sang Liza Minnelli numbers at the local mall, took modern-dance classes, competed in classical music festivals (and won). “I know a lot of Italian arias and German art songs,” she said.After high school, Lee attended Northwestern University in the hopes of going into musical theater. “Back then it was ‘Miss Saigon,’ ‘South Pacific,’ ‘The King and I,’” she said. “It’s kind of sad to think about now. It was so limited in what it could be. But it was still enough for me to feel like there was something here that I deeply want to be a part of.”For a time, she hustled for any type of role or gig. “I was meeting rejection and obstacles, and I remember feeling constantly like I was falling behind,” she said, recalling the five-year stretch when she booked just a few TV episodes.Still, all that auditioning paid off. In 2010, Lee found herself on Broadway in a revival of “La Bête,” a comedy in iambic pentameter set in the 17th century and starring David Hyde Pierce and Joanna Lumley. Even then, she was multitasking. “I would do that play, and then change out of my corset and walk around the corner to MTV’s ‘TRL’ studios, where I was a VJ.”Supporting parts in celebrated series like “High Maintenance,” “Girls” and “Inside Amy Schumer” followed. In 2019, Lee landed regular roles on the streaming series “Russian Doll,” which finished its second season last month, and “The Morning Show,” which has been renewed for a fourth season.“I think the path I took, as an Asian American woman, was different from what is conventional,” Lee said. “Certain points in my life during this journey didn’t always make sense to other people. But it makes so much sense to me now.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesLee read the script for “Past Lives” the following year and was immediately captivated. “It really stood out in terms of what a romantic drama could be,” she said. “It’s not a conventional love story or love triangle. And the woman at the center of the story is really different from others I’ve seen in other films.”Not long after that first read, “I got a phone call from an assistant, asking if I was available for an important meeting” at a restaurant in the Village, she said. “I assumed I had gotten the job!” But the assistant had the wrong number, and it turned out the message, unrelated to “Past Lives,” was for Greta Gerwig.In fact, Lee wasn’t even being considered for the part. For months, Celine Song, the writer and director of “Past Lives,” had been looking at other Noras, other Hae Sungs. “They cast it with two other people,” Lee said.According to Song, the oversight had little to do with Lee herself. The film’s story is loosely based on the true-life reunion of Song, her American husband and her Korean school pal, which took place when the director was 29. “When you’re young, you think that being 29 is so interesting and cool and meaningful,” Song said. “So I was trying to find somebody at 30, or even in their twenties, and Greta, of course, was in her late 30s.”“It was really stupid,” Song admitted.AFTER SONG CAME TO HER SENSES, she contacted Lee. A year had passed since Lee had first read the script, but she still remembered it: her soul-mate film, she called it. Could she meet with Song, via Zoom, that day? After a video audition that stretched on for two and a half hours, with Lee reading key scenes as Song played the two male leads (“Celine makes an excellent Arthur and Hae Sung,” Lee said), Song offered Lee the part on the spot.The film began shooting in summer 2021. To help the actors convey the feeling of being reunited with someone after 24 years, when you’ve only communicated over Skype, Song kept Lee and Yoo apart as much as possible. “She told us, you guys can’t touch,” Lee said.For Yoo, “during the rehearsal process, the instinct is to say goodbye naturally, with a hug,” he said. “And Celine was like, no, no, no, you guys, no touching.” I’m allowed to touch and hug, she told them, but Yoo and Lee got shooed away when they tried.Song insisted that the actors were all in, and that she never had to scold them to keep them in line. “Is that what they’re saying?” she asked, with a laugh. “No, no. I think they wanted to go along with the trick.”Of course the actress balked, Lee said, at least at first. “I was like, we’re all professionals here, and there’s a question of, how much of this needs to be actualized? We’re acting. But I think we all wanted to support her vision of this, and I was also curious to see how this might affect the process.”“It was really visceral, that first moment when we hug each other,” Yoo said. “So I was glad that we were able to capture that, and the audience gets to experience it.”Much of “Past Lives” was filmed in New York, as Nora shows Hae Sung around the city during a particularly dreary, rain-soaked week. The shoot was a reunion for the cast — not with, say, a long-lost sweetheart, but with the city itself. Song and the three leads had all lived in New York when they were coming up. Lee and Yoo had spent years in the East Village as struggling actors: Yoo, above a pizza joint at the corner of Avenue A and St. Marks Place; Lee, above a Thai restaurant in a small apartment she shared with three other women.“I was the first kid to be an American citizen in the family, the first to go to school here, just navigating all these things,” Lee said. “I always had a burning fire to prove something.”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“We were shooting on the actual streets I lived on in the East Village when I was just starting out as a young 20-something, really desperate for work and trying to make a living,” Lee said. “It’s embarrassing to put it this way, but I guess it did feel somewhat like destiny.”In addition to “Past Lives,” Lee returns this fall as the network executive Stella Bak in the third season of “The Morning Show.” “I think people are really going to be excited about her arc on this season,” Lee said.She’s also set to appear in “Problemista,” an A24 comedy written, directed and starring Julio Torres. Greta plays a painter unfairly maligned by an art critic (Tilda Swinton). The part is small, Torres said, but memorable. “Greta has a way of staying with you even when you haven’t seen a lot of her, which is a very powerful thing to have,” he said.Right now, however, Lee’s focus is on “Past Lives.” All those other experiences she’s gone through, the stage work and revivals, the sketches and half-hour comedies, the TV dramas and voice actor work, she said, have all helped prepare her for this moment.“I think the path I took, as an Asian American woman, was different from what is conventional,” she said. “Certain points in my life during this journey didn’t always make sense to other people. But it makes so much sense to me now.”“I feel like I’ve been working really hard,” she added, “to make sure I was ready for the day when a role like Nora Moon would come my way.” More

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      Mary Turner Pattiz, Rock D.J. During FM’s Heyday, Dies at 76

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      She was known as “the Burner” for her seductive delivery, but off the air she was anything but a wild rock ’n’ roller. She later became an addiction counselor.Mary Turner Pattiz, who as Mary Turner was a silky-voiced disc jockey at KMET, the album-oriented rock station that was the soundtrack of Southern California in the 1970s and early ’80s, before leaving radio to become an addiction counselor and philanthropist, died on May 9 at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 76.The cause was cancer, said Ace Young, a former KMET news director.KMET was a hard-rocking upstart in the early 1970s, with its laid-back jockeys delivering a steady flow of new music from bands like the Who, Pink Floyd and Steely Dan, along with slightly naughty patter — a bit of sexual innuendo, endless stoner jokes — that was a welcome counter to the Top 40 hits churned out by AM stations.They were proud renegades, mixing surf reports with news coverage of events like the Mexican government’s spraying of its illegal marijuana crops with paraquat, a deadly poison. (When Jim Ladd, a late-night D.J., told his listeners to phone the White House to protest the practice, 5,000 callers jammed the White House switchboard.) Their bright yellow billboards were ofteninstalled upside down. They had a signature cheer, “Whooya” (the “w” was silent), that all the jockeys worked into their programs; the neologism was a refinement, Mr. Young said in an interview, “of the coughing sound we made when we smoked too much pot.” Ms. Pattiz — then Mary Turner — was known as “the Burner,” a nickname said to have been given to her by Peter Wolf, the lead singer of the J. Geils Band, for her seductive delivery and good looks, and she had the prime nighttime spot, from 6 to 10 p.m.When major bands came to town to perform or promote a new record, they made a stop at KMET to be interviewed by Ms. Pattiz. She was soft-spoken and conversational, a gentle interlocutor who once teased Bruce Springsteen by asking, “Do you really know a pretty little place in Southern California, down San Diego way, where they play guitar all night and all day?” (She was quoting “Rosalita,” a song from Mr. Springsteen’s second album.) Most important, she let her subjects talk without interruption. For his part, Mr. Springsteen was so taken with her that he asked her on a date, and at his performance at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., the night after the interview, he dedicated the song “Promised Land” to her.“You guys can’t see what she looks like,” he told the audience. “She’s real pretty.”She was also extremely private, circumspect about her personal life, her background and even her age. If she dated a rock star, her colleagues weren’t aware of it.“The image of a rock ’n’ roll woman on the hippest radio station during those wild years was not the real Mary Turner,” said Michael Harrison, a former host and program director at KMET who is now the publisher of Talkers, a trade publication about the radio industry. “The real Mary Turner wasn’t wild. She was smooth and professional. It was show business.”Mr. Ladd, whose show followed hers, said: “You would listen to her, and you would fall in love with her voice. She was deceptively soft. She would say a joke and two minutes later you would get the punch line. And like all good interviewers, she knew when to keep her mouth shut.”By 1981, two rock interview shows she hosted, “Off the Record” and “Off the Record Specials,” were being syndicated by Westwood One, a company founded by the media entrepreneur Norman Pattiz, whom she married in 1985. They were broadcast in every major market in the United States and 40 countries through the American Forces Radio and Television Service, giving Ms. Pattiz a worldwide audience of more than 20 million. Members of the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury of Queen all opened up during her freewheeling sessions. Mr. Mercury declared that he found his early music disposable, “like a tampon.” Keith Richards was eloquent on the ineffable magic of the Stones’ chemistry, and Mick Jagger admitted to extreme burnout while on tour.On Ms. Pattiz’s 10th anniversary at KMET, she was honored by Tom Bradley, then the mayor of Los Angeles, in a ceremony at City Hall. A few months later she left the station.Her final show, on Aug. 6, 1982, is in the permanent collection of the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan. The hard-driving playlist included “Hang ’Em High” by Van Halen, “Back in the Saddle” by Aerosmith and, appropriately, “Rosalita.”“Well, listen you guys, it has been a lot of fun spending every single weekday night with you for the last 10 years,” she said as she concluded the show, “but the old Burner’s got to be moving on.” And then she played her final tune, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.”Ms. Pattiz in 2005. She worked at KMET in Los Angeles for 10 years before signing off with one last hard-driving playlist in 1982.R. Diamond/WireImage, via Getty ImagesMary Caroline Turner was born on Feb. 4, 1947, in Baltimore. Her father, William Turner, was an aviation representative for an oil company. Her mother, Carol (Steuart) Turner, was a homemaker.She studied communications at Indiana University Bloomington, thinking she might work in television, but instead found a job as a promotions director at KSAN, a progressive radio station in San Francisco. She did a little of everything there: engineering, hosting a weekend talk show and filling in for other disc jockeys. It was the days of free-form FM radio, when the D.J.s played music from their own collections, and to their own taste.“It was an exciting time back then because you didn’t operate under any rules,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1982. “You could play anything you wanted, say anything you wanted, and who cared? FM at that time was a joke, especially to Top 40 people. We were the hippies, and they were the stars.”She worked briefly at KSFX, a competing station in San Francisco, and then auditioned for an opening at KMET in 1972. At the time, she was one of only a handful of women working in radio. (Among the others was Alison Steele, otherwise known as “the Nightbird,” a sultry star on WNEW-FM, KMET’s sister station in New York City.)Ms. Pattiz said she found her gender to be an advantage, despite the overzealous fans who lurked in the parking lot after her show and the stalker who frightened her so much that she never left work without her two German shepherds and a male colleague.“I think being a woman helped more than anything else,” she told The Los Angeles Times. “The time was right for it, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”Although Ms. Pattiz continued making her “Off the Record Specials” until the early ’90s, she mostly left the radio world — and her colleagues — behind after her marriage to Mr. Pattiz. The couple then became known for their philanthropy and for their regular appearances courtside at Lakers games.Ms. Pattiz also began working as a drug and alcohol counselor, having confronted her own struggles with substance abuse. In 2006 she earned a master’s degree in psychology from the California Graduate Institute (now the Chicago School of Professional Psychology), and in 2008 she earned a Ph.D. In 2010, she became chairwoman of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., taking over from Mrs. Ford’s daughter, Susan Ford Bales. Most recently, she served on the boards of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and its Graduate School of Addiction Studies.“When she left broadcasting she had no interest in discussing the subject whatsoever,” said Elliot Mintz, a longtime media consultant and a friend of the couple. “She became totally committed to improving the lives of people caught in addiction.”Mr. Pattiz died in December. Ms. Pattiz is survived by a brother.“The Mary Turner of the Betty Ford era was the real Mary Turner,” Mr. Harrison of Talkers said “The Mary Turner of KMET was a figment of our rock ’n’ roll fantasy.”Alain Delaquérière More

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      Boston Symphony Picks Chad Smith of L.A. Philharmonic as New Leader

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      The departure of Chad Smith, the Philharmonic’s chief executive, is another loss for that orchestra, whose maestro, Gustavo Dudamel, is also leaving.Chad Smith, a veteran arts leader who has helped turn the Los Angeles Philharmonic into one of the most innovative orchestras in the United States, will leave his post this fall to become president and chief executive of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, both ensembles announced on Monday.Smith, 51, who has been the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s chief executive since 2019, said in an interview that the pandemic had made him rethink his priorities.“I really have thought a lot about my journey here, and I’m ready for a change,” he said. “Change is also healthy for everyone.”Smith’s departure is a significant loss for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which is still reeling from the announcement in February that its superstar maestro, Gustavo Dudamel, would leave in 2026 to become the next music director of the New York Philharmonic.Smith said that his move was unrelated to that of Dudamel, with whom he has worked closely in promoting contemporary music and expanding the orchestra’s youth education programs. He said that he felt it was the right moment now that the worst of the pandemic appears to be over and audiences are once again returning to concert halls.“My decision was my own, and I know that Gustavo’s decision was his own,” he said. “It will provide the opportunity for the organization in L.A. to have a new artistic and executive leadership team to really move into the future.”Smith will take the helm of the Boston Symphony at a time of tumult and division.The orchestra has in recent years built a reputation for artistic and financial success, winning Grammy Awards and amassing an endowment of $484 million. But after the retirement in 2021 of the orchestra’s longtime leader, Mark Volpe, the organization entered a chaotic period.A long list of senior leaders and staff have departed, including Volpe’s successor, Gail Samuel, the orchestra’s first female president and chief executive, who abruptly resigned in December, just 18 months into her tenure. (Samuel also came from the Los Angeles Philharmonic.)The turmoil has alarmed the Boston Symphony’s musicians, staff, board and patrons. The orchestra’s leaders, including the board chair, Barbara W. Hostetter, a philanthropist, have declined to speak publicly about the problems. In a statement on Monday, she praised Smith’s appointment, saying that it would “usher in a new era of many exciting opportunities.”Smith said he was not intimidated by the troubles in Boston, adding, “The B.S.O. is going through things that all organizations go through at certain times.” He said he would work to bring stability to the orchestra and to help it rethink its identity and mission.“There are a lot of questions you have to ask,” he said. “Who do we want to be? What are those things that are absolutely essential? And where can we can continue to grow and expand and think differently about who we are and how we connect with audiences in our communities?”Smith said that he would work to bring more racial, ethnic and gender diversity to the orchestra, which is less diverse than some of its peers. And he said that he was eager to keep Andris Nelsons, the music director in Boston since 2014, whose contract expires in 2025, calling him an “extraordinary musician.”The challenges in Boston are familiar to Smith, who has spent 21 years at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, previously serving as its chief operating officer and vice president of artistic planning, developing a reputation for innovative programming and for forging ties to contemporary composers. He became chief executive in 2019 after the abrupt resignation of Simon Woods, who had been in the job for less than two years.Like the Boston Symphony, the Philharmonic has been known for its artistic and financial success. Both institutions have benefited from having robust, and highly lucrative, outdoor summer offerings: the Hollywood Bowl in California, and Tanglewood in Massachusetts.The loss of Smith will create a void in Los Angeles, where the orchestra is in the beginning stages of a search for a successor to Dudamel. Thomas L. Beckmen, the chair of the orchestra’s board, said in a statement that the Philharmonic was “confident our next leader will carry forward our values and vision and inspire the L.A. Phil to even greater heights.”Dudamel expressed his gratitude to Smith in a statement, noting that the “only constant in life is change” and pledging in his remaining years to “give everything I can to the L.A. Phil and our wonderful audiences.”Smith’s move to Boston will be a homecoming of sorts. He studied European history at Tufts University and has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in vocal performance from the New England Conservatory, and often attended Boston Symphony concerts while Seiji Ozawa was music director.He recalled a memorial concert for the composer Aaron Copland. “I still get chills thinking about that,” Smith said. “It’s something I come back to very often about why I love the orchestral world and the orchestral music.” More

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      The Los Angeles Opera, Post-Plácido Domingo

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      LOS ANGELES — When the tenor Russell Thomas appeared at the Los Angeles Opera in 2017, Plácido Domingo, the company’s general director, asked him to return one day to sing the title role in Verdi’s “Otello.” It was a notable invitation coming from Domingo, the leading Otello of his day, who sang the role in 1986 at the very first performance of the Los Angeles company.Six years later, Thomas is back in Los Angeles starring as Otello in a six-performance run that begins Saturday. But Domingo, who had initially contemplated singing opposite him as the opera’s villain, Iago, is gone, having resigned in 2019 at the age of 78 amid allegations that he had sexually harassed multiple women over the course of his career.So it is that the company’s season-ending production of “Otello” is at once a look back to its foundations and a glimpse into its future, as the Los Angeles Opera charts its course in a post-Domingo era at a moment when it faces the same challenges as other companies in recovering from the loss of audience members and revenues since the pandemic.“It’s slow — it’s much slower than I would have desired,” Christopher Koelsch, the company’s president and chief executive officer, said of the audience’s return. But he noted that attendance was in line with what other opera houses across the country were seeing these days, and that there were signs that the company was overcoming its recent setbacks. “By most criteria, other than audience attendance, the company is in significantly better shape than it’s been in its 38-year history,” he said.Christopher Koelsch, the company’s president and chief executive officer, has been programming new work alongside the classics to reach new audiences.Damon Casarez for The New York TimesAttendance so far this season has averaged 64 percent of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s 3,033-seat capacity — still short of the 83 percent the company logged in 2018-2019, but showing improvement since it first reopened after the shutdown. Two productions that sold well, and sometimes sold out, reflected the company’s efforts to balance new works with the classics: “Omar,” the new Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels opera based on the autobiography of an enslaved Muslim scholar that won the Pulitzer Prize for music this week, and “The Marriage of Figaro,” the Mozart comedy.In a season when the Metropolitan Opera in New York was forced to dip into its endowment to make up for declining revenues, the Los Angeles Opera’s endowment is at a record high — $74.1 million, up from $28.8 million in 2012 — reflecting a continued influx of contributions, said Keith Leonard, the chairman of its board. It survived the downturn without running a deficit, relying on salary reductions, a handful of layoffs, a $5 million five-year loan against the endowment, and federal aid.Domingo’s downfall stunned Los Angeles and its opera company, which had been so closely identified with the star tenor, who had been singing there since the 1960s and was instrumental in the creation of the company. An investigation by the Los Angeles Opera found accusations that he had engaged in “inappropriate conduct” with women “to be credible,” but did not find evidence that he had engaged in “a quid pro quo or retaliated against any woman by not casting or otherwise hiring her at L.A. Opera.” When he left, the company pledged to strengthen its measures for preventing misconduct.It is difficult to say precisely whether attendance was affected by the departure of Domingo, given that the coronavirus shutdown followed so soon afterward. For many years his performances had drawn the biggest crowds, and his image was as integral to the company’s marketing as Gustavo Dudamel’s is for its neighbor, the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “It is unmistakably a loss because he’s such a titanic figure in the world,” Koelsch said. But, he added, “a scientific controlled experiment is impossible here.”The opera never filled the general director position after Domingo left; those responsibilities were picked up by Koelsch, who already was running its day-to-day operations.Domingo, in an email interview, said that in his view, the company had continued to thrive even after what he made clear was his unhappy departure from a position that had been a high point of his career.Rachel Willis-Sørensen as Desdemona, Thomas as Otello, Sarah Saturnino as Emilia and Igor Golovatenko as Iago during a rehearsal for “Otello.”Damon Casarez for The New York Times“I saw it grow and I believe that I gave it my all, to the point that it became one of the leading opera houses in the U.S. and the world,” he said, adding: “I see the programming and the seasons appear to be very diverse, with a big focus on new works that can attract new audiences and I think this is a great added value for all the people of Los Angeles.”With a $44 million operating budget, the Los Angeles Opera is the fifth largest company in the United States. Despite its (by opera standards) short existence, and with its modest roster of six productions a season (compared with 23 this season at the Met), it has been establishing itself as one of the more adventurous mainstream opera houses in the country: working to be more edgy than stuffy.Even before Domingo left, the company — aware of his age, and that an institution should not be too closely tied to any one person — had been planning for its future, working to forge an identity that would combine war horses with more contemporary work.For a decade it has been working with Beth Morrison Projects, which has been at the vanguard of producing contemporary opera: they collaborated on the world premiere of Ellen Reid’s opera “p r i s m” in 2018 at Los Angeles’ smaller Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, or REDCAT, and the work won a Pulitzer Prize. And in 2020, “Eurydice,” by Matthew Aucoin, who was then the opera’s artist-in-residence, had its world premiere at the Dorothy Chandler before moving to the Metropolitan Opera.“L.A. Opera is doing very, very well,” said Marc A. Scorca, the president of Opera America, a nonprofit service organization for opera companies. “Of all the major companies in the country, it is the youngest and is still discovering new audiences and new momentum as L.A. continues to build out its cultural infrastructure. I am very optimistic about the company.”James Conlon, the music director, said that the company has work to do to regain its audience after the pandemic.Damon Casarez for The New York TimesThis spring, it collaborated with Beth Morrison Projects to present two operas by Emma O’Halloran, the Irish composer, at the 250-seat black box theater inside REDCAT.One of them, a 70-minute, two-person work called “Trade,” explores an emotionally unsettling hotel room liaison in working-class Dublin between an older married man and a younger male prostitute, hardly the kind of story that has historically been presented on the opera stage.“When we started this relationship, most opera companies were not doing new work,” Morrison said. “L.A. Opera, in terms of the big companies, was very much ahead of the curve on that. They believe in experimental work, and they believe we need to have these things to make sure that opera evolves into the future and brings in new audiences.”Now other large companies, including the Met, are programming more new works in hopes of attracting new audiences.If this is a recovery, it is still a tentative one; crucial questions about how audience behavior has changed remain to be answered. James Conlon, who has been the opera’s music director since 2006, after being recruited for the job by Domingo, said that the opera was “working very hard to regain that audience.”“My own suspicion,” he said, “is that a lot of the competition is not going to be other venues but people who are sitting home who became used to making more use of their televisions.”With “Otello,” the company is returning to the work it opened with in 1986.Damon Casarez for The New York TimesThat is a particular issue in Los Angeles, considering the early evening traffic that can make trips downtown to the Music Center an exhausting, hourslong adventure.When the company was first formed, there was much talk about whether Los Angeles had an appetite for grand opera. “Up until the early 80s the received opinion by many of the leading figures at the Music Center was that ‘L.A. is not an opera town’ and ‘L.A. can afford a great symphony or a great opera, but not both,’” said Don Franzen, an original member of the opera’s board of directors.But 38 years after that opening night, that question appears to have been answered.“Los Angeles is very much an opera town — I see the growth of the company and its success as a testimony to that,” Scorca, of Opera America, said.Now Thomas, the company’s current artist-in-residence, is getting ready to take his place singing the demanding role that launched the company: Otello. He recalled that invitation from Domingo, who had floated the idea of appearing with him in the lower-lying baritone role of Iago, since he had stopped singing high tenor roles.“He was very interested in my singing Otello, and he and I performing the show together,” Thomas said the other day. “I would have loved that to happen. I would have loved to be onstage with one of the legendary singers in opera. Things happen the way they do.” More

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      Hollywood Writers Strike Is ‘Going to Be a While’

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      The writers and entertainment companies remain far apart on several key issues, including money, and the standoff could last for months.It’s not just posturing: As screenwriters continue their strike against Hollywood companies, the two sides remain a galaxy apart, portending a potentially long and destructive standoff.“Any hope that this would be fast has faded,” said Tara Kole, a founding partner of JSSK, an entertainment law firm that counts Emma Stone, Adam McKay and Halle Berry as clients. “I hate to say it, but it’s going to be a while.”The Writers Guild of America, which represents 11,500 screenwriters, went on strike on Tuesday after contract negotiations with studios, streaming services and networks failed. By the end of the week, as companies punched back at union in the news media, and striking writers celebrated the disruption of shows filming from finished scripts, Doug Creutz, an analyst at TD Cowen, told clients that a “protracted affair seems likely.” He defined protracted as more than three months — perhaps long enough to affect the Emmy Awards, scheduled for Sept. 18, and delay the fall TV season.The W.G.A. has vowed to stay on strike for as long as it takes. “The week has shown, I think, just how committed and fervent writers’ feelings are about all of this,” Chris Keyser, a chair of the W.G.A. negotiating committee, said in an interview on Friday. “They’re going to stay out until something changes because they can’t afford not to.”The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios, streaming services and networks, has maintained that it hopes “to reach a deal that is mutually beneficial to writers and the health and longevity of the industry.” Privately, however, member companies say they are prepared to weather a strike of at least 100 days. The most recent writers strike, which began in 2007 and ended in 2008, lasted that long.“It’s fair to say there’s a pretty big gap,” Bob Bakish, chief executive of Paramount Global, told analysts and investors on a conference call on Thursday. Paramount and its CBS subsidiary are prepared to “manage through this strike,” he added, “even if it’s for an extended duration.”Among the writers’ demands is that studios not let artificial intelligence encroach on writers’ credit or compensation.James Estrin/The New York TimesBoth sides have insisted that the other needs to make the first move to restart talks. None are scheduled. For the moment, media companies have turned to contract renewal negotiations with the Directors Guild of America, which start on Wednesday. That contract expires on June 30.Like writers, directors want more money, especially regarding residual payments (a type of royalty) from streaming services, which have rapidly expanded overseas. Before streaming, writers and directors (and other creative contributors, including actors) could receive residual payments whenever a show was licensed, whether that was for syndication, an international deal or DVD sales. In the streaming era, as global services like Netflix and Amazon have been reluctant to license their series, those distribution arms have been cut off.In addition to raises, however, writers want media companies — Netflix, in particular — to make structural changes to the way they do business. The companies — Netflix, in particular — say that is a bridge too far.The W.G.A. has proposals for mandatory staffing and employment guarantees, for instance. The union contends that the proposals are necessary because entertainment companies are increasingly relying on what is known in Hollywood slang as a miniroom. In one example of a miniroom, studios hire a small group of writers to develop a series and write several scripts over two or three months. Because they have not officially ordered the series, studios pay writers less than if they were in a large, traditional writers’ room.And given the relatively short duration of the position, those writers are then left scrambling to find another job if the show is not picked up. If a show does get a green light, fewer writers are sometimes hired because blueprints and several scripts have already been created.“While the W.G.A. has argued” that mandatory staffing and duration of employment “is necessary to preserve the writers’ room, it is in reality a hiring quota that is incompatible with the creative nature of our industry,” the studio alliance said in a statement on Thursday.Writers responded with indignation. “We don’t need the companies protecting us from our own creativity,” said Mr. Keyser, whose writing credits include “Party of Five” and “The Last Tycoon.” “What we need is protection from them essentially eliminating the job of the writer.”Writers also want companies to agree to guarantee that artificial intelligence will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation. Such guarantees are a nonstarter, the studio alliance has said, instead suggesting an annual meeting on advances in the technology. “A.I. raises hard, important creative and legal questions for everyone,” the studios said on Thursday. “It’s something that requires a lot more discussion, which we have committed to doing.”Mr. Keyser’s response: Go pound sand.“This is exactly what they offered us with the internet in 2007 — let’s chat about it every year, until it progresses so far that there’s nothing we can do about it,” he said. In that case, have fun on the picket lines, studio executives have said privately: It’s going to be hot out there in July.Over the last week, media companies conveyed an air of business as usual. On Thursday, HBO hosted a red carpet premiere for a documentary, while the Fox broadcast network announced a survivalist reality show called “Stars on Mars” hosted by William Shatner.“3 … 2 … 1 … LIFT OFF!” the network’s promotional materials read.With the exception of late-night shows, which immediately went dark, Mr. Bakish assured Wall Street, “consumers really won’t notice anything for a while.” Networks and streaming services have a large amount of banked content. Reality shows, news programs and some scripted series made by overseas companies are unaffected by the strike. Most movies scheduled for release this year are well past the writing stage.Shares climbed on Friday for every company involved with the failed contract talks; investors tend to like it when costs go down, which is what happens when production slows, as during a strike. If the strike drags into July, analysts pointed out, studios can exit pricey deals with writers under “force majeure” clauses of contracts.“The sorry news for writers is that, in declaring a strike, they may in fact be helping the streaming giants and their parent companies,” Luke Landis, a media and internet analyst at SBV MoffettNathanson, wrote in a report on Wednesday.Writers, however, succeeded in making things difficult for studios over the first week. Apple TV+ was forced to postpone the premiere of “Still,” about Michael J. Fox and his struggle with Parkinson’s disease, because Mr. Fox refused to cross a picket line. In Los Angeles, writers picketed the Apple TV+ set for “Loot,” starring Maya Rudolph, causing taping to halt. In New York, similar actions disrupted production for shows like “Billions,” the Showtime drama. Other affected shows included “Stranger Things” on Netflix, “Hacks” on HBO Max and the MTV Movie & TV Awards telecast on Sunday, which went forward without a host after Drew Barrymore pulled out, citing the strike.“The corporations have gotten too greedy,” Sasha Stewart, a writer for the Netflix documentary series, “Amend: The Fight for America” as well as “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore,” said from a picket line last week. “They want to break us. We have to show them we will not be broken.”Writers went into the strike energized. But a rally at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Wednesday seemed to supercharge the group, in part because leaders from other entertainment unions turned out to support them — and in fiery fashion. During the 2007 strike, writers were largely left to stand alone, while a union representing camera operators, set electricians, makeup artists and other crafts workers blasted the writers for causing “devastation.”Ellen Stutzman, chief negotiator for the writers, received a standing ovation from the estimated 1,800 people who attended the rally. During the session, writers suggested expanding picket lines to the homes of studio chief executives and starting a public campaign to get people to cancel their streaming subscriptions.Some writers realized that Teamsters locals, which represent the many drivers that studios rely on to transport materials (and people), would not cross picket lines. So they started to picket before dawn to intercept them. (The W.G.A. has advised a 9 a.m. starting time.) At least one show, the Apple TV+ dystopian workplace drama “Severance,” was forced to shut down production on Friday as a result of Teamsters drivers’ refusing to cross. More