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    Bobby Rivers, Witty VH1 Host, Dies at 70

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    After getting his start as an entertainment reporter and film critic, he went on to host a show on the Food Network and establish a presence in the blogosphere.Bobby Rivers, an affable and playful television host, entertainment reporter and film critic, died on Tuesday in Minneapolis. He was 70.The cause was complications of cancer, said his brother, Tony. He died in a hospital.Bobby Rivers got his start on television on “Good Morning Milwaukee” in 1979. “That was huge,” his brother said in an interview. “It was a wonderful springboard for him. People got to see his talent, his wit, his humor, his ability to turn a phrase, and I think that blew people away.”He moved to national TV in the early days of the VH1 cable music channel, where he had his own talk show, “Watch Bobby Rivers.”That show was hailed by the critic Stephen Holden in The New York Times. “Mr. Rivers is a disarmingly sweet, quirky personality who exudes a benign sense of mischief as he joshes with stars,” Mr. Holden wrote in 1988. “A nerdy, post-collegiate Eddie Murphy with no axes to grind, he is a master interviewer with a gift for light, impromptu banter.”Mr. Rivers’s interview style was friendly, and he always seemed to be joking with his guests. But that didn’t prevent him from bringing up tough subjects, and his amiability could draw out revealing responses. In the late 1980s, for instance, he called Norman Mailer to account for sexism with such a big smile that Mailer almost didn’t notice.In the 1990s he became an entertainment reporter for local stations in New York, appearing on “Weekend Today in New York” on WNBC and “Good Day New York” on WNYW.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Movies

      As Movie Theaters Embrace Swift, One Showcases Her Exes

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      In addition to “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” a Milwaukee theater is programming films that feature some of her starry boyfriends.Like movie theaters across the country that are facing the fallout of an actors’ strike and the shift to streaming, the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee was quite pleased to have Taylor Swift’s concert film coming to its screens.But “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which has been a box office rainmaker, comes with an unconventional stipulation: Theaters may only show it Thursdays through Sundays, said Cara Ogburn, the artistic director of Milwaukee Film, which runs the Oriental Theater.So what to do, she wondered, on the other three days of the week?“What if we show all Jake Gyllenhaal movies,” Ogburn suggested offhandedly, initially as a joke. “True counterprogramming.”The idea quickly expanded. The team’s resident Swiftie assured leadership that the theater would not be canceled for a lineup based on the pop star’s famous exes. Then staff members selected qualifying films that also had Halloween-adjacent themes.Starting next week, the three-screen art-house theater will show the original “Twilight” (Taylor Lautner, a.k.a. the werewolf Jacob Black), “Dunkirk” (Harry Styles, a.k.a. One Direction heartthrob turned nondescript World War II soldier), “Crimson Peak” (Tom Hiddleston, a.k.a. a pre-Loki baronet) and, yes, a lot of Gyllenhaal.There’s “Zodiac” on Tuesday.“Enemy” plays on Oct. 29, followed the next night by “Nocturnal Animals.”Then, on Halloween, comes “Donnie Darko.”It may be true that Swift’s songbook is only “minimally about romantic love,” as Taffy Brodesser-Akner recently observed in The New York Times Magazine. But Swift is well aware of the way she has been caricatured for having, as she puts it in “Blank Space,” a long list of ex-lovers who will say she is insane.“We were surprised to discover how many boyfriends she has had who have been in movies,” Ogburn said of Swift, who was connected to Lautner in 2009, Gyllenhaal in 2010, Styles in 2012 and Hiddleston in 2016. (Recently, she has been seen with the N.F.L. player Travis Kelce.)“Then we whittled it down to — what is a good movie?” Ogburn said. Finally, she said, the team had to consider what films it could actually get the rights to show.Independent movie theaters that show more than blockbusters often target specific fan bases. In the same month that the Oriental Theater has organized and branded “The Exes Tour,” it is hosting the Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival and showing older horror favorites and current Oscar contenders like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”But the most vocal crowds are expected for Swift’s concert film, which in many places has become a glitter-filled, Eras-inspired mega event. She has encouraged viewers to treat the outings like the many concerts that captivated fans this year, urging the exchange of friendship bracelets and dancing to the songs that Swifties know by heart.The desire for packed theaters and a concertlike atmosphere might help explain the unique scheduling requirements for “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which collected nearly $93 million domestically in its first weekend. It also has standardized symbolic ticket prices: $19.89 for general admission and $13.13 for everyone else.Ogburn, whose team created a special drink menu for the movie’s run (red wine, for instance, became simply “Red”), said she had not fielded complaints about movie theater etiquette. “We’re kind of into enthusiastic moviegoing,” she said. “A little applauding like you’re at a concert is nothing we can’t handle.”She did wonder whether there would be a less kind reaction to “Donnie Darko,” a 2001 cult classic in which Gyllenhaal’s disturbed character encounters a life-size rabbit.“Will we get Swifties booing?” she asked. More

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      in Music

      Oliver Anthony Says ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Is Not a Republican Anthem

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      “I wrote this song about those people,” Oliver Anthony said of his No. 1 hit, after presidential candidates answered a question about his Billboard hit at their first debate.The singer Oliver Anthony, whose song “Rich Men North of Richmond” has soared to the top of the Billboard singles chart, released a YouTube video on Friday denouncing Republicans and conservative outlets for co-opting his song.“It was funny seeing that presidential debate,” Anthony said. “I wrote that song about those people.”A clip of Anthony performing was played by Fox News moderators at the start of the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, after a series of videos of Americans lamenting conditions under President Biden, including inflation and homelessness. The clip showed Anthony — with guitar in hand and two dogs at his feet — singing: “These rich men north of Richmond / Lord knows they all just wanna have total control.”The song, which Anthony uploaded to YouTube earlier this month, had caught fire with conservative figures like Matt Walsh and Laura Ingraham, who described it as an authentic expression of working-class American life. Widely perceived as a conservative anthem, it also drew critiques from some on the left, who called the lyrics racist.At the debate, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was the first to respond to a question asking why the song had struck a chord with so many Americans.“Our country is in decline,” Mr. DeSantis said. “This decline is not inevitable. It’s a choice.” He added, “Those rich men north of Richmond have put us in this situation.”Anthony said Friday it “cracks me up” that the candidates had been forced to listen to his song onstage, because he was singing about powerful people like them.The new video showed him behind the wheel of his truck, as heavy rain pelted the windows. “That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden,” he said. “You know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden.”Anthony, who is from Farmville, Va., also said that he was fed up by what he perceived to be the weaponization of his music by both the right and left.“It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me like I’m one of them,” he said. “I see the right, trying to characterize me as one of their own. And I see the left trying to discredit me.”The left, he added, had misinterpreted his lyrics as being attacks on the poor when, he said, he was trying to defend them. “I’ve got to be clear that my message like with any of my songs, it references the inefficiencies of the government.”Reason, a libertarian magazine, had lauded what it perceived as Anthony’s anti-tax message. But liberal commentators were troubled by a lyric about the “obese milkin’ welfare.” The folk singer Billy Bragg even wrote his own version of the song and cautioned Anthony about punching down.At first, Anthony appeared to welcome the attention from conservatives. He granted Fox News the right to use it in the debate, Politico reported. And he gave an interview to the network, saying that he had been motivated to write the song because of his own struggles, which he assumed were shared by others.“It resonates the suffering in our world right now, like even in our own country,” he said then. “We’ve had years of people feeling depressed and hopeless and every time you look at the T.V. or get online everything’s negative.” He added that “corporate media and education” had helped to sow division.Anthony returned to that theme in his video on Friday, saying that despite how it may appear, his music had actually united people.“It’s driving people crazy to see the unity that’s come from this from all walks,” Anthony said. “This isn’t a Republican and Democrat thing. This isn’t even a United States thing. Like, this has been a global response.”Anthony, who could not immediately be reached for an interview on Friday evening, described himself as a “nobody” who through some divine intervention had been tasked with sending a message that things needed to change. Before his meteoric rise to fame, he was an unknown songwriter. Although he performs as Oliver Anthony, his full name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford.“I don’t know what this country is going to look like in 10 or 20 years if things don’t change,” he said. “I don’t know what this world is going to look like. And like, something has to be done about it. You know?” More

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      in Television

      Cindy Williams, Star of ‘Laverne & Shirley,’ Dies at 75

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      The show, in which Ms. Williams and Penny Marshall played roommates who worked in a Milwaukee brewery, was a spinoff of “Happy Days” and became a staple of 1970s television.Cindy Williams, an actress best known for her role on the 1970s slapstick sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 75.Her death followed a brief illness, her assistant, Liza Cranis, said by phone on Monday, adding that she had died “peacefully.” No cause was given.With Penny Marshall, Ms. Williams starred in the sitcom, which ran from 1976 to 1983 and was a spinoff of the television show “Happy Days.” It followed two young single women working at a Milwaukee brewery in the 1950s. Ms. Williams played Shirley Feeney, an upbeat and demure complement to Ms. Marshall’s brash Laverne DeFazio.“Laverne & Shirley” ran for eight seasons and, for several years, was among the highest-rated shows in the country. Ms. Williams appeared in more than 150 episodes but left in the final season of the show, after considerable on-set tension between her and Ms. Marshall. Ms. Marshall died in 2018, also at age 75.Ms. Williams is survived by her children, Emily and Zak Hudson, who, in a statement on Monday, described their mother as “one of a kind,” noting her sense of humor and “glittering spirit.” Her marriage to the musician Bill Hudson ended in divorce.Ms. Williams signing copies of her book “Shirley, I Jest! A Storied Life” in 2015.Beck Starr/Getty ImagesBefore Ms. Williams debuted in the role that would most define her career, she was cast in the George Lucas film “American Graffiti,” released in 1973. For her portrayal of Laurie in the film, she earned a nomination for best supporting actress from the British Academy Film Awards. The next year, she was in the Francis Ford Coppola film “The Conversation.” American Graffiti” and “The Conversation” garnered best picture nominations at the Academy Awards.Ms. Williams also auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise, a part that eventually went to Carrie Fisher.Later in her career, Ms. Williams was a guest star on well-known television shows such as “Law and Order: SVU” and “7th Heaven” and earned several stage credits including the Broadway production of “The Drowsy Chaperone,” in which she briefly played Mrs. Tottendale.But she was best known as Shirley.“She was sort of an optimist, kindhearted, repressed, temperamental, fun-loving person,” Ms. Williams once said of her character. “I always saw her as having this fear,” she added, noting that while Shirley’s desires were never explicitly played out onscreen, both Laverne and Shirley strove for the comforts of modern life.“That was the sadness of those characters to me,” Ms. Williams added. “What if that never happens, then where are we? And that was sort of my life, too.”Born in Van Nuys, Calif., a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, on Aug. 22, 1947, Cynthia Jane Williams became interested in acting during high school and attended Los Angeles City College, where she majored in theater arts, according to biographies provided by Ms. Cranis. “I’m what you might call a ‘Valley Girl,’” Ms. Williams wrote in her 2015 memoir, “Shirley, I Jest! A Storied Life.”She worked at a pancake house, as well at the Whisky a Go Go nightclub in Hollywood, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Ms. Williams went on to perform in commercials for deodorant and sunglasses, some of which never aired, she said in an interview with the Television Academy. Her early television roles included parts on “Room 222,” “Nanny and the Professor” and “Love, American Style.”“I always played the lead’s best friend, always,” she said.Then known for her seemingly guileless American sweetheart presence, Ms. Williams turned that expectation inside out with an exceptionally sly performance in “The Conversation.” In the film, the viewer pieces together her words from a surreptitiously recorded conversation, expecting her to be a helpless victim, not the calculating femme fatale that she is. More dramatic roles might have followed, but she turned to situation comedy instead.Ms. Williams and Ms. Marshall were writing partners at Zoetrope, a production company founded by Mr. Coppola, where they were working on a prospective TV spoof for the bicentennial, when Garry Marshall, Ms. Marshall’s brother, asked if the two women would guest star on his show “Happy Days” as easy dates for Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and Richie (Ron Howard). Fonzie claimed Laverne for himself, while Shirley was meant for Richie, reuniting Ms. Williams with her “American Graffiti” co-star, Mr. Howard, who had played her boyfriend in that film.The episode of “Happy Days,” which aired in 1975, was so popular that Mr. Marshall pitched Fred Silverman, a top executive at ABC, about doing a comedy starring the two, arguing that there were no other shows about blue-collar women.The opening credits of “Laverne and Shirley” featured a school rhyme and a heartwarming mission statement that summed up the duo’s playful, hopeful ethic that anyone could relate to: They might just be young working-class women in the big city, but they are going to make their dreams come true.Laverne and Shirley’s high jinks were reminiscent of those of Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz on “I Love Lucy,” but, for this classic comedy duo, Shirley was (usually) the calmer and dreamier of the pair. With her breezy personality, Ms. Williams demonstrated an easy flair for portraying the awkwardness of youth in broad physical comedy.In a review of “Laverne & Shirley” in 1976, John J. O’Connor, the television critic for The New York Times, wrote: “Both title roles are played to a splendid noncondescending turn. Miss Williams and Miss Marshall touch all the best bases, a bit of Barbara Stanwyck in “Stella Dallas” here, a bit of Giùlietta Masina in “La Strada’ there, touches of Lucille Ball, Eve Arden and that crowd all over the place.”Though the actresses shared the screen, Ms. Williams sometimes felt that her co-star got preferential treatment because of her connection to Mr. Marshall. For her part, Ms. Marshall felt that Ms. Williams’s husband at the time, Mr. Hudson, who wanted to be a producer, was too demanding.At the beginning of the show’s final season, viewers watched Ms. Williams marry Walter Meeney — and become Shirley Feeney Meeney. Soon afterward, however, her long run had an ignominious end, with the plot claiming Shirley had followed her new husband overseas, leaving only a note to say goodbye. In reality, the actress had hoped to work with the show to hide and accommodate her pregnancy. She later sued for $20 million; the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.“‘Laverne & Shirley’” ended abruptly for me,” Ms. Williams wrote in her memoir. “When we shot the first episode, I was four months pregnant. But when it came time to sign the contract for that season I realized that the studio had scheduled me to work on my delivery due date.”“In the wink of an eye, I found myself off the show,” she wrote. “It was so abrupt that I didn’t even have time to gather my personal things.”In 2013, Ms. Williams and Ms. Marshall reunited for an appearance on the Nickelodeon series “Sam & Cat,” a modern show that riffed on the themes of “Laverne & Shirley” and starred Jennette McCurdy and Ariana Grande.Ms. Williams published her memoir two years later, and last year she completed a national theater tour of a one-woman show, “Me, Myself and Shirley.” In the show, she chronicled her life in Hollywood as well as her relationship with Ms. Marshall.“You couldn’t slip a playing card in between us because we just were in rhythm,” she said last year in an interview with NBC. “I couldn’t have done it with anyone else.”Sheelagh McNeill More

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      in Music

      The Pulitzer Prize Winner That Emerged Out of a Time of Quietness

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      Raven Chacon’s “Voiceless Mass,” a work for ensemble and pipe organ that “evokes the weight of history in a church setting,” won the prize for music.At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the world around him turned quiet and still, the composer Raven Chacon went to work.Inspired by the silence of days spent in lockdown, he began writing “Voiceless Mass,” a 16-minute work for ensemble and pipe organ. Chacon, 44, a member of the Navajo Nation who lives in Albuquerque, set out to use the sounds of the organ, accompanied by winds, strings and percussion, to explore themes of power and oppression.“During the pandemic, we were able to focus on some of the cries of people who were feeling injustices around them,” he said in an interview. “Lockdown was this time of quietness where there was an opportunity for those sounds and cries to emerge.”On Monday, “Voiceless Mass” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music. It was an unexpected honor for an artist who has worked across genres — music, video, printmaking — to shine light on the struggles facing Indigenous people.Chacon said he did not realize he had won the prize until shortly after the announcement on Monday, when friends started texting him.“Apparently they don’t call you,” he said.“Voiceless Mass” had its premiere on Nov. 21, 2021, at the annual Thanksgiving concert of Present Music, an ensemble dedicated to contemporary music. It was commissioned by the ensemble and by the Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ and Plymouth Church in the United Church of Christ.Chacon has described the work as an exploration of the “spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit.” He wrote “Voiceless Mass” specifically for the Nichols & Simpson organ at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee.“In exploiting the architecture of the cathedral, ‘Voiceless Mass’ considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power,” Chacon has said.The Pulitzer committee praised the piece as a “mesmerizing, original work for organ and ensemble that evokes the weight of history in a church setting, a concentrated and powerful musical expression with a haunting visceral impact.”It is the latest in a series of works by Chacon exploring the injustices suffered by Indigenous people. He has produced graphic scores dedicated to Indigenous female composers; recordings of silent standoffs between Indigenous women and the police during protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, in 2016; and a video installation, filmed on Navajo, Cherokee and Seminole lands, featuring women singing the stories of sites where massacres or removals have taken place.He also wrote the music, along with Du Yun, for the opera “Sweet Land,” a meditation on colonialism that premiered in 2020.Chacon said he hoped the prize would help give “Voiceless Mass” a broader audience.“I hope it gets performed more,” he said. “It’s always been a challenge to make this kind of work accessible to people who can’t enter these spaces, either because of monetary barriers, or just because they feel they aren’t the audience for classical music.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Markie in Milwaukee’ Review: Acknowledging Painful Transitions

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Markie in Milwaukee’ Review: Acknowledging Painful TransitionsThis documentary presents a portrait of a transgender woman’s life, her faith as an Evangelical Christian and her strained relationship with her family.Markie, as seen in “Markie in Milwaukee.”Credit…Icarus FilmsMarch 10, 2021, 5:08 p.m. ETMarkie In MilwaukeeDirected by Matt KliegmanDocumentary1h 32mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.When the documentary “Markie in Milwaukee” begins, Markie Wenzel, a middle-aged transgender woman, is in the process of eradicating the records of her own existence. When we meet her, nearly a decade ago, she’s beginning the process of “detransitioning,” which in her case meant legally changing her name, discarding her hormone treatments and wearing men’s clothes in public.Markie came out in 2006 at the age of 46, and her wife, her children and her church painfully rejected her. Shortly thereafter, she met the director Matt Kliegman, who was flying through the Milwaukee airport where Markie works. Kliegman struck up a friendship with her when she was newly open about her gender, and he began to film her. His movie is the result of about 10 years spent documenting Markie’s life, her faith as an Evangelical Christian and her strained relationship with her family.[embedded content]Whether transitioning or detransitioning, Markie invites the filmmakers into her life with tremulous vulnerability. The documentary plainly lays out the impasses she is facing. As a woman, Markie is more fully realized but utterly alone. If she lives as a man, she is self-denying, but her community no longer holds her at a distance.Markie is generous with the camera, and her candor lends the film power. She grants access to her personal archives, sharing tapes from her former life as a pastor and photos of her once-secret makeup tests. The film doesn’t waste her openness or her willingness to use the documentary as a kind of therapeutic space.But if Markie is undeniably compelling as a subject, the film doesn’t quite match her bravery and her willingness to explore uncharted territory. There are plenty of fly-on-the-wall observations, but little play or introspection besides what Markie is able to offer.Markie in MilwaukeeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More