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      Ke Huy Quan Says His Oscar Nomination Is ‘So Unbelievably Surreal’

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      On Tuesday morning, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh and their “Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert met on a video call to watch the announcement of the Oscar nominations together, and as the sci-fi hit racked up each of its stunning 11 nominations, the group would toast, gasp, cheer and yell.“It was so loud, we could barely hear what anyone was saying,” said a laughing Quan, who received his first Oscar nomination Tuesday for playing Waymond Wang, the sweet-natured husband to Yeoh’s multiverse-saving laundromat owner. How did he react when his name was read?“I was jumping up and down, screaming at the top of my voice, exactly the same way that I did when I got the phone call from my agent that the Daniels wanted me to play Waymond,” Quan said during a phone interview conducted a half hour after the announcement. He described Tuesday as one of the happiest days of his life. “It’s so surreal. I am ecstatic.”“Everything Everywhere” represents a major career comeback for Quan, who rose to fame as a child actor in films like “The Goonies” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” but quit acting for decades when he found roles for an Asian actor hard to come by. While watching “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018, Quan began to mull a return, and two weeks after asking an agent friend to represent him, he was sent “Everything Everywhere” and went out on his first audition in years.Now, he’s Oscar-nominated for it, and alongside Yeoh, his co-star Stephanie Hsu, and “The Whale” actress Hong Chau, history has been made: There have never been so many actors of Asian descent nominated in the same year.Interviews With the Oscar NomineesMichelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Ke Huy Quan: A former childhood star, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” actor said the news of his best supporting actor nomination was surreal.Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.“I’ve been watching the Oscars for more than 30 years now, and every single year, I would imagine myself being on the red carpet, being in that room with everybody,” Quan said. “Of course, as the years went by, the chance of it ever becoming true slowly dissipated. And when I stepped away from acting for so long, I didn’t think that dream would ever come back. So to be here today, to hear the announcement, it is so unbelievably surreal. It’s crazy, and I’m speechless.”Opposite Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Quan planned to spend the day celebrating with family: “For so many years, they were so worried about me. To see how happy they are means the world to me.Allyson Riggs/A24, via Associated PressLike the “CODA” star Troy Kotsur last year, Quan has cruised through the season picking up every supporting-actor trophy in sight, from the Gothams to the Golden Globes to the Critics Choice Awards. It’s an outcome he never could have foreseen when he wrapped the film in early 2020 and then, over the pandemic, failed to book even a single follow-up role.“That year and a half was horrible because every tape we would send in, we would get no response back,” he said. “I was so afraid I was going to lose my health insurance. I called my agent, saying, ‘Get me anything, it doesn’t matter what, I need to make the minimum to get health insurance.’”But Quan’s taped auditions still came to naught, and he lost his insurance just a few months before “Everything Everywhere” came out in March 2021. “I was so dispirited,” he said, remembering a desperate call he placed to “Everything Everywhere” producer Jonathan Wang: “I said, ‘You’ve seen the movie. Can you please tell me, am I any good in it?’ He said, ‘Ke, why are you asking such a stupid question?’ And I said, ‘Because nobody wants to hire me.’ And Jonathan says, ‘Well, you just wait. Just wait until the movie comes out.’”Since then, Quan said, it’s been a sea change in how he’s been perceived. People who used to stop him on the street and ask, “Are you the kid from ‘Indiana Jones’?” now recognize him as Waymond from “Everything Everywhere,” and he will soon be seen in Season 2 of “Loki” and the forthcoming series “American Born Chinese.”“It’s been the greatest, wildest ride,” said Quan, who was eager to celebrate the day’s success with his wife, Echo — “We didn’t think a day like this would ever, ever happen” — and to call family members who had stuck by him and sent proud texts all through awards season.“For so many years, they were so worried about me,” he said. “To see how happy they are means the world to me, so I just want to spend the day with my family.”As I brought our call to a close, something new dawned on Quan, and he began to talk … well, all at once.“Kyle! From this day forward, I will always be ‘Oscar-nominated actor Ke Huy Quan’!” he said. “How great is that? Oh my gosh, I see it all the time when I go watch trailers, when people talk about actors — ‘Oscar-nominated actor Leonardo DiCaprio.’ It sounds so nice. And now, my name is going to sound like that, too.”He laughed in disbelief. “Awesome!” Quan said. More

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      in Theater

      Filming Eugene O’Neill When the Elements (and Investors) Don’t Cooperate

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      Starring Jessica Lange and Ed Harris, Jonathan Kent’s adaptation of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” started production, only to lose key financing.WICKLOW, Ireland — “Strong winds, gradually subsiding” read the call sheet.Jessica Lange, Ed Harris and Jonathan Kent, the director of the forthcoming film version of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” were standing in a rehearsal room here in early November, listlessly running through lines. Harris, playing James Tyrone, an aging former matinee idol, touched his toes and did squats as he spoke, while Lange, playing his fragile, morphine-addicted wife, Mary, flitted distractedly around the room.Producers and assistants, phones glued to ears, bustled in and out, anxiously monitoring the stormy weather that prevented the cast and crew from heading to the set: a house modeled on the Monte Cristo Cottage in Connecticut, the seaside home of O’Neill’s family that provides the setting of this autobiographical play. The go-ahead came several hours later. The shoot finished close to midnight as Kent and the cast tried to push through the day’s packed schedule.It wasn’t the first storm the production had weathered, literally and metaphorically. One day after filming began on Sept. 19, the lead producer, Gabrielle Tana, discovered that their biggest chunk of financing had fallen through. “I had to go to the set and tell them we were shutting down,” she said.On location in Ireland, the Tyrones’ home is based on Eugene O’Neill’s seaside family home in Connecticut.Patrick RedmondTana (whose credits include “Thirteen Lives” and “The Dig”) said it was one of the worst moments of her long career. “I let them know I wasn’t giving up, and was already in conversations with investors,” she said.During the nail-biting weeks that followed, she spent endless hours in meetings trying to drum up the money. Remarkably, the cast — including Ben Foster and Colin Morgan, playing the Tyrone sons — as well as most of the crew and production team, never wavered in their commitment to the project. A handful of staff members, including the director of photography and some production design workers, weren’t able to stay with the production. The rest waited it out in this coastal region about an hour south of Dublin.The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Meet the Newer, Bolder Michelle Williams: Why she made the surprising choice to skip the supporting actress category and run for best actress.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies like Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.‘Glass Onion’ and Rian Johnson: The director explains why he sold the “Knives Out” franchise to Netflix, and how he feels about its theatrical test.A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.“We were shocked at first, of course,” said Lange, who played Mary Tyrone in 2000 in London, and won a Tony Award for the role in a production directed by Kent that transferred from the West End to Broadway in 2016. “But never once did we think it wasn’t going to happen. We just hung in, went to the pub, took long walks. We really became friends and cared deeply for one another, because we were going through the same thing.” She added, “I think that in some way it added to our intensity and passion for doing this.”Three weeks of waiting to restart, Harris said, allowed him “to sit back, think about the character, calm down, and just be this dude rather than worrying about playing such a classic, important role.”The actors also made calls. Foster made a connection to the British theater producer Bill Kenwright, who had worked with Lange on productions of “Long Day’s Journey,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Glass Menagerie” in the West End and on Broadway.Ben Foster, left, with Colin Morgan, helped make calls when crucial financing fell through.MGM“I knew we would figure it out,” Foster said. “If we had to do it as a sock puppet show, we’d do that till we raised the money.”The sock puppet show was averted; Kenwright came through. “He was our knight in shining armor,” Tana said. A few other knights had to be found too, including the film producer Gleb Fetisov.First adapted for the screen in 1962, “Long Day’s Journey” is Kent’s debut feature. “This is, probably, the greatest American play, the invention of the dysfunctional family drama, and when you do it in the theater, there is a sort of reverence from the audience,” Kent said. “I thought that perhaps with film, one could shred that reverence a bit and allow its rawness and immediacy through.”Then he factored in current events that coincided, like the opioid epidemic and the coronavirus lockdown. “Here are these four, addicted not just to drugs and alcohol, but to each other, endlessly going over the past, the missed opportunities and failure, trapped in a house by the sea,” he said. “Somehow it felt resonant.”Lange said that she and Kent first talked about a film version during the Broadway run. “I immediately thought, yes!” she said, adding that Mary Tyrone “gets under your skin like no other character I have ever played; you never come to the end of it. And because of the nature of filmmaking, there is so much more subtlety that can be brought to light: the expression in the eyes, the subtle shift in the voice.”Tana first heard about the idea when the actor Ralph Fiennes, a friend of Kent’s, asked her to help with the project, which is scheduled for release this fall. She was intrigued and engaged the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire — his “Good People” had been directed by Kent — to adapt the drama, which needed to shrink from an almost-four-hour theatrical event to an under-two-hour film.“There was never an agenda of ‘Let’s improve this,’” Lindsay-Abaire said in a video call from New York, adding that there isn’t a word of text in the film that wasn’t written by O’Neill. “It was the opposite: Let’s maintain what we love while telling the story in a different medium. It wasn’t using a machete as much as a scalpel. We took the dramatic Hippocratic oath: Do no harm to O’Neill!”Film, he pointed out, has communication tools that the stage doesn’t have. “You can sometimes replace four lines with a close-up,” he said. “We kept asking, does the character need to say that, or can they just act it?” He and Kent also discussed ways to make the drama more cinematic, by withholding some information that O’Neill reveals early. “Ghosts, hauntings, what is Mary doing up there? We wanted to lean into some mystery, to hint at things and reveal them more slowly,” Lindsay-Abaire said.Ed Harris joined the production when Gabriel Byrne had a scheduling conflict. Jessica Lange first discussed the idea of an adaptation when she performed the play on Broadway.MGMGabriel Byrne, who had starred opposite Lange onstage, was slated to reprise the role, but he fell out due to scheduling conflicts. Tana emailed Ed Harris, who had appeared with Lange in the movie “Sweet Dreams” almost 40 years earlier. He said yes immediately. “As tough as it was when the money fell out, it was the most rewarding film acting experience I’ve had in quite a while,” Harris said. Kent, he added, “gave us the freedom to just be those people — that it wasn’t a sacred text, that this was about human beings, not a dried-up historical piece.”Kent said that he had considered updating the 1912 setting, but had decided that too many fundamental details would have to be altered. Still, “to the designer’s chagrin, I asked that the costumes not be too ‘period,’” he said. “Whatever the setting, the text makes it a living, contemporary thing.”Two weeks of rehearsal before the start of the shoot allowed the four main actors to begin to build a family dynamic. “I immediately fell head over heels for my parents,” Foster said, adding that he had brought some foraged greenery from the actual Monte Cristo cottage as a talisman.“The rehearsal time was all about finding out what might work for character,” Morgan said. “A director who isn’t as theater-versed as Jonathan might work out camera angles first, then what the character does within. But I think the best directors work so that the camera is actor-led, and that’s how Jonathan approached it.”Then, almost immediately, came the hiatus and a roller coaster of emotions. “The bonding of that time was actually wonderful,” Foster said. “Historically I don’t socialize a lot with fellow actors. But in this case, it really did become a family.”The difficulty of making the film, Tana said, is indicative of the changing cinematic landscape. “It’s really hard now to make this kind of literary, straightforward, old-school independent movie,” she said. “There is so much value to this: these great, great actors doing a great American play that every kid studying literature will be able to watch. But it’s a sea change moment in our field in the way we access content, how it is monetized, where the resources are.”Kent agreed that the film goes against the current grain, but added: “We all have mothers, fathers, our terrible sense of failures and disappointments and guilt. I think what we crave from film or theater is truth about our human experience. There is an audience for that.” More

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      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘American Masters: Roberta Flack’

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      The ABC reality dating show returns for its 27th season, and the PBS series looks at the singer Roberta Flack.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. 23-29. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE BACHELOR 8 p.m. on ABC. This long-running reality dating series is back for its 27th season. This one includes visits to the Bahamas, England, Hungary and Thailand, as Zach Shallcross, a 26-year-old tech executive who has also appeared on “The Bachelorette,” dates 30 women.Christian Bale and Charlotte Le Bon in “The Promise.”Jose Haro/Open Road FilmsTHE PROMISE (2016) 6:45 p.m. on HBO Signature. Terry George, the director of the acclaimed 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda,” explores another genocide in “The Promise.” Set in 1915 in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, the film follows a love triangle between an Armenian medical student, Mikael (Oscar Isaac); a French-Armenian artist, Ana (Charlotte Le Bon); and an American journalist, Chris (Christian Bale). In her review for The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis called the film “a big, barren wartime romance that approaches the Armenian genocide with too much calculation and not nearly enough heat.” But viewers with an interest in the subject matter might still find the movie absorbing.TuesdayRoberta Flack in “American Masters: Roberta Flack.”Leroy Patton/Ebony Collection, via Warner Music GroupAMERICAN MASTERS: ROBERTA FLACK 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). “There isn’t another pop-soul singer around with the versatility and refinement of Roberta Flack,” the critic Stephen Holden wrote in The Times in 1981 after watching Flack perform at Carnegie Hall. Her music has topped Billboard charts with No. 1 singles like “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” and this special documents her rise to stardom and her experience as a Black woman both in and out of the studio. Along with home movies, archival photos and unreleased music, the documentary includes interviews with Flack herself, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Clint Eastwood, Yoko Ono and Angela Davis.WednesdayNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INVESTIGATES: LSD & THE PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION 10:15 p.m. on National Geographic. On Jan. 1, Oregon became the first state to legalize the adult use of psilocybin mushrooms (long known as “magic” mushrooms) amid a rising recognition of their ability to improve the effects of a variety of mental health conditions, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. This timely special dives into exactly how psychedelics are being used to heal modern ills after a decades-long ban.ThursdayTHE CHOSEN (1981) 10 p.m. on TCM. Set in 1940s Brooklyn, “The Chosen” is a coming-of-age story that follows an unlikely friendship between Danny (Robby Benson), a Hasidic Jew, and Reuven (Barry Miller), a more secular Jewish schoolboy. In her review for The Times, Janet Maslin wrote that the film, based on the Chaim Potok book by the same name, is at its best when it “describes the Hasidic culture through Danny and his reactions to the secular world.”FridayIN THEIR OWN WORDS: CHUCK BERRY 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Through a collection of original singles written and performed in the latter half of the 1950s, Chuck Berry shaped the nascent genre of rock ’n’ roll while staying true to his roots and experiences. Using interviews with his widow, son and grandson, along with Berry’s colleagues and other musicians, this documentary follows Berry’s journey from growing up in segregated St. Louis to becoming a foundational figure in 20th century popular music.SaturdayChadwick Boseman in “Black Panther.”Marvel StudiosBLACK PANTHER (2018) 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on FX. “Black Panther” became the highest-grossing film of all time by a Black director when it was released in 2018. Featuring Chadwick Boseman (who died in 2020), Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o and Daniel Kaluuya, the movie follows T’Challa (Boseman), the heir to the throne of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, as he and his allies defend against outside challengers. But the film is about much more than that. “Race matters in ‘Black Panther,’” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times, “and it matters deeply, not in terms of Manichaean good guys and bad but as a means to explore larger human concerns about the past, the present and the uses and abuses of power.” Its highly anticipated sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” is currently in theaters.SundayGOOD WILL HUNTING (1997) 5:50 p.m. on Showtime. This classic is what Janet Maslin described in her Times review in 1997 as a “Cinderella story.” The titular Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he solves a near-impossible math problem left on a chalkboard. The film follows Will as those around him, including a psychotherapist played by Robin Williams, learn of his genius, and he reckons with the direction of his future. “The script’s bare bones are familiar,” wrote Maslin, “yet the film also has fine acting, steady momentum, a sharp eye and a very warm heart.” More

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      in Movies

      Edward R. Pressman, Film Producer Who Boosted Many Careers, Dies at 79

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      Oliver Stone, Terrence Malick, Kathryn Bigelow and other directors were just starting when he took on their projects.Edward R. Pressman, a prolific film producer who guided some of the earliest movies by Brian De Palma, Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone, Kathryn Bigelow and other leading directors, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 79.The cause was respiratory failure, his family said.Mr. Pressman was producer or executive producer on almost 100 movies across a range of genres. His career began in the late 1960s and by 1988 had already resulted in enough acclaimed films that he was the subject of an 11-movie retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.The New York Times said then that he “has been distinguished by his dedication to both highly literate and decidedly quirky movie projects during the last two decades.” And he still had some three decades and more than 60 movies ahead of him.Jack Nicholson as the labor leader Jimmy Hoffa in the 1992 film “Hoffa.” Mr. Pressman persuaded David Mamet to write a screenplay, recruited Mr. Nicholson to star and made an unconventional choice for director: the comic actor Danny DeVito.Liaison/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesMr. Pressman’s name is on films about intriguing real-life figures — “Hoffa” (1992), with Jack Nicholson as the Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa; “The Man Who Knew Infinity” (2015), which starred Dev Patel as the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan; “Paterno” (2018), the HBO film in which Al Pacino portrayed the football coach Joe Paterno. It is on action fantasies like “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), the movie that brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to stardom. It is on scalding crime dramas like “Bad Lieutenant” (1992) and “American Psycho” (2000).His biggest claim to fame, especially early in his career, may have been his willingness to take a chance on unproven talent.One of his first forays as a producer was a movie about a murder that may or may not have been committed by one of two formerly conjoined twins, “Sisters” (1972) — Mr. De Palma’s breakthrough in the creepy crime genre. (Mr. Pressman was also a producer on a 2006 remake, directed by Douglas Buck.) Two years later, he produced Mr. De Palma’s comic drama about a disfigured composer who sells his soul, “Phantom of the Paradise,” which has become a cult favorite.Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in “Badlands” (1973), the first feature directed by Terrence Malick. Mr. Pressman said he was partial, especially early in his career, to movies like this one that were “the expression of a single vision.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesIn between those two he produced the first feature directed by Mr. Malick, “Badlands” (1973), which starred Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, both still early in their careers, as criminals on the run. In 1981 he produced the horror film “The Hand,” the first studio feature directed by Mr. Stone.In 1990 he and Mr. Stone were producers on the crime drama “Blue Steel,” a film by another relative newcomer, Ms. Bigelow; 30 years later she became the first woman to win the directing Oscar, for “The Hurt Locker.” Mr. Pressman also took a chance on David Byrne, the lead singer of Talking Heads, producing Mr. Byrne’s feature debut as a director, the offbeat comedy “True Stories” (1986).Whatever project he was involved in, Mr. Pressman generally avoided the hands-on approach some other producers favor.“The hardest thing I’ve learned over the years is that I’m getting paid a lot of money to produce a movie, but sometimes the best thing to do is nothing,” he told The New York Times in 1992, when he was making “Hoffa.” “I don’t need to impose myself.”Nonetheless, he knew he played a vital role.“It’s the creative urge that makes me work,” he told American Film magazine for a 1988 article. “The pleasure is, to some extent, vicarious, but it’s no less creative for that. It is creating a world by bringing together creative financing with creative filmmakers. In a sense, producing can be compared to conceptual art.”Although Mr. Pressman and his company, Pressman Film, worked with major studios, he was partial, especially early in his career, to independent films — movies that were “the expression of a single vision,” as he put it in a 1989 interview with SBS of Australia, like “Badlands,” which was both directed and written by Mr. Malick.Other times, he viewed his job as bringing together the right director, writer and actor, as with “Hoffa” — he persuaded David Mamet to write a screenplay, recruited Mr. Nicholson to star and, after a few other candidates proved not to be a good fit, made an unconventional choice for director: the comic actor Danny DeVito.“I think of myself as a catalyst in attracting the key elements,” he told The Times.And sometimes he was the person who validated a director’s vision, as he was for Ms. Bigelow on “Blue Steel,” which, in addition to directing, she wrote with Eric Red.“The script for ‘Blue Steel’ was rejected multiple times; the general response was, ‘Could the NYC police officer be a man instead of a woman?’” Ms. Bigelow said by email. “I said, no. Then Ed Pressman agreed. Jaimie Lee Curtis played the officer. Ed offered a lifeline.”Charlie Sheen, left, and Michael Douglas on the set of “Wall Street” (1987), one of many movies on which Mr. Pressman worked with the director Oliver Stone.Sunset Boulevard/Corbis, via Getty ImagesEdward Rambach Pressman was born on April 11, 1943, in Manhattan. His parents, Jack and Lynn (Rambach) Pressman, founded the Pressman Toy Corporation, and, especially after his father died when he was a teenager, there was some expectation that Edward would go into the family business, but his interests veered to other things.At Stanford University, he studied philosophy, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1965, and he first started thinking about a career in the movie business.“I had a roommate my senior year whose father was a director,” he told American Film in 1991, “and we’d talk about making films.”The prospect of actually doing so seemed remote, he said, but it became a reality when, studying for a year at the London School of Economics, he met Paul Williams, a fellow American who was going to Cambridge and who shared his growing interest in films.“I thought he was, you know, Cecil B. De Mille,” Mr. Pressman said, “and he thought I was Louis Mayer.”They jointly produced a short that Mr. Williams wrote and directed, “Girl” (1967). Two years later they combined again on a feature, “Out of It,” again written and directed by Mr. Williams; Jon Voigt was in the cast, as he was for Mr. Pressman’s next project with Mr. Williams, “The Revolutionary” (1970).Mr. Williams had only a limited career after that, but Mr. Pressman was on his way.His later movies included Mr. Stone’s “Wall Street” (1987), a defining movie of the 1980s. It was while making Mr. Stone’s “The Hand” that Mr. Pressman met Annie McEncroe, who was in the cast (for most of her movie career she was billed as Annie McEnroe); they married in 1983. She survives him, along with their son, Sam Pressman, an executive at Pressman Film; a sister, Ann Markelson; and a brother, Jim. Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), directed by John Milius and produced by Mr. Pressman. In addition to producing prestige films, Mr. Pressman liked making movies based on pulp magazine and comic book characters.Universal Pictures-Sunset Boulevard/Corbis, via Getty ImagesIn addition to advancing the careers of directors and actors, Mr. Pressman advanced a genre: He was big on making movies based on pulp magazine and comic book characters, something that was not as common when he began doing it in the early 1980s as it is today, in the age of digital effects.“Conan the Barbarian” and its sequel, “Conan the Destroyer” (1984), were based on the pulp character created in the 1930s by Robert E. Howard, and Mr. Pressman’s comics-inspired films included “The Crow” (1994) and several sequels, as well as “Judge Dredd” (1995).“Comic books, video games, interactive software — these are all areas where artists can create with great freedom and imagination,” he told Business Wire, prophetically, in 1993. “They will be a major part of the motion picture industry’s future.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘The Wandering Earth II’ Review: It Wanders Too Far

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      The audacious sequel to Frant Gwo’s 2019 sci-fi blockbuster follows survivors working to avert planetary disaster, but it loses much of the glee of its predecessor.Upon its release, “The Wandering Earth,” Frant Gwo’s 2019 film about a dystopia in which Earth is perilously pushed through space, was minted as China’s first substantial, domestic sci-fi blockbuster, with the box office returns to prove it.The film was entertaining enough, but its ambitious scope had something of an empty gloss to it, partly because the story’s drama wasn’t grounded in anything beyond the showy cataclysm. Its audaciously messy sequel, “The Wandering Earth II,” seems to have taken note and sprinted, aimlessly, entirely in the other direction. Losing all of the glee of its predecessor, the movie instead offers nearly three hours of convoluted story lines, undercooked themes and a tangle of confused, glaringly state-approved political subtext.Boasting a bigger budget and greater expectations — the Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau has been added to the cast — “Wandering Earth II” is, narratively, a prequel. Gwo’s follow-up takes place years before the events of the first film and focuses on the United Earth Government’s initial efforts to push Earth out of our solar system, a move intended to avoid planetary disaster. It sets up flimsy ideas about dystopian geopolitics, man versus machine, and the nature of human consciousness (partly as a back story to the “2001: A Space Odyssey”/evil HAL 9000 knockoff plot of the first film).This is all just in the first hour of setup, before the film does a fast-forward to the next conflict, years later, when humankind needs to nuke the Moon. The premise might be laughable, but silly narrative ideas didn’t get in the way of a good time in the first film. It’s hard to say how much of a true cinematic achievement “The Wandering Earth” was when it gave China its very own “Armageddon,” but after this sequel trips over its armful of melodramatic plotlines and conspicuously nationalist messaging, you’re left wishing you just savored the mindless fun the first time around.The Wandering Earth IINot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 53 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Alec Baldwin Will Be Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter in ‘Rust’ Killing

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      A gun that Mr. Baldwin was rehearsing with went off, killing the film’s cinematographer. The armorer responsible for weapons on set also faces manslaughter charges.Silent footage shows Alec Baldwin practicing a scene with a revolver on the “Rust” movie set before shooting and killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.For more than a year, the actor Alec Baldwin has tried to defend himself against the suggestion that he bore responsibility for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of “Rust,” a low-budget western he was filming on the outskirts of Santa Fe, N.M.He told detectives he had been assured the gun he was rehearsing with that day did not contain live ammunition, sat down for an extensive television interview, sought indemnification from financial liability in the case and then sued crew members on the film, claiming that they were responsible for handing him a loaded gun.But on Thursday prosecutors said they would charge him with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the killing of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, saying they believed he had a duty to ensure the revolver was safe to handle.“We’re trying to definitely make it clear that everybody’s equal under the law, including A-list actors like Alec Baldwin,” Andrea Reeb, a special prosecutor appointed by Santa Fe County’s district attorney to help handle the case, said in an interview. “And we also want to make sure that the safety of the film industry is addressed and things like this don’t happen again.”The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who loaded the gun that day and was responsible for weapons on the set, will also be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. The film’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, who handed Mr. Baldwin the gun, agreed to a plea deal on a charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon.During an interview with detectives, Alec Baldwin said that the gun “should’ve been a cold gun with no rounds inside.”The criminal charges Mr. Baldwin faces came as a surprise to many in the film industry and were strongly disputed by his legal team. A lawyer for Mr. Baldwin, Luke Nikas, said the prosecutors’ decision “distorts Halyna Hutchins’s tragic death and represents a terrible miscarriage of justice.”“Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun — or anywhere on the movie set,” Mr. Nikas said in a statement on Thursday. “He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds. We will fight these charges, and we will win.”SAG-AFTRA, the union representing film, television and radio workers, said in a statement that the death of Ms. Hutchins was a “preventable” tragedy but that it was “not a failure of duty or a criminal act on the part of any performer.”“The prosecutor’s contention that an actor has a duty to ensure the functional and mechanical operation of a firearm on a production set is wrong and uninformed,” the union said. “An actor’s job is not to be a firearms or weapons expert.”Mr. Baldwin, 64, has been a household name for decades as a Hollywood leading man, a TV star who played Jack Donaghy in “30 Rock” and former President Donald J. Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” a co-host of the Oscars and the voice of the New York Philharmonic’s radio broadcasts.He has long drawn scrutiny for his offscreen behavior, which has included run-ins with paparazzi, an arrest for riding his bicycle the wrong way on Fifth Avenue, a 2018 arrest over a parking space dispute and feuds waged on social media.But he has never faced a crisis like the one he faces now.Ever since the shooting Mr. Baldwin had sought to strike a delicate balance: publicly maintaining his innocence in an effort to preserve his reputation and career while trying to stay out of legal jeopardy.He appeared on national television, where he said he had been told that the gun did not have live rounds in it, and added that he was only following directions when he pointed it at the cinematographer. “Someone is ​responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me,” he said in the interview.Privately, a police report said, he had lamented to a detective that fall that “if your name becomes associated with something, nobody wants to work with you anymore — nobody.”After news of the charges spread, about two dozen reporters and photographers camped out on the sidewalk outside his Manhattan apartment, to the consternation of neighbors.If a jury found Mr. Baldwin or Ms. Gutierrez-Reed guilty, it would choose between the two manslaughter charges. The more serious one includes a firearm enhancement and a mandatory five-year sentence; the other charge carries a sentence of up to 18 months.A detective questioned Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer on “Rust,” about the ammunition inside the gun that killed the movie’s cinematographer.The criminal charges against Mr. Baldwin are sure to reopen questions about safety on film sets, and who bears responsibility. The district attorney for Santa Fe County, Mary Carmack-Altwies, said in an interview that Mr. Baldwin had a duty to ensure the gun and the ammunition were properly checked and that he should never have pointed it at anyone. “You should not point a gun at someone that you’re not willing to shoot,” she said. “That goes to basic safety standards.”Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer who was responsible for the weapons on set and loaded the gun that day, told investigators she had checked the gun and all six cartridges she loaded, but she also remarked, “I wish I would’ve checked it more.”One of her lawyers, Jason Bowles, said his client was not responsible for involuntary manslaughter, calling the investigation into the case “flawed.”The shooting on Oct. 21, 2021, which also wounded the film’s director, Joel Souza, took place in a small set meant to look like a church. The film’s first assistant director, Mr. Halls, 63, took the revolver from a gray, two-tiered tray set up outside the church by Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 25, and handed it to Mr. Baldwin, calling out “cold gun” to indicate it did not contain live ammunition, according to court papers.A lawyer for Mr. Halls, Lisa Torraco, said in a statement that the plea deal allowed him to “put this matter behind him and allow the focus of this tragedy to be on the shooting victims, their family and changing the industry so this type of accident will never happen again.”The prosecutors said they had determined it was part of film industry standards for actors to ensure that the guns they used on set were safe for them to handle, saying they had interviewed several actors who spoke to the importance of those protocols. Mr. Baldwin has pushed back on that idea in the past, saying that in his experience on film sets it was not the practice for actors to check their own guns.Ms. Reeb, the special prosecutor, who is also a Republican member of the New Mexico Legislature, said Ms. Gutierrez-Reed was also responsible for ensuring that the guns on the set did not contain live rounds, saying in an interview that she should have taken each round out of the gun and shaken them in front of the actor — a practice that helps confirm the rounds are dummies, inert cartridges used to resemble real ammunition in a film.Body camera video shows a lieutenant searching for the gun that discharged and fatally wounded a cinematographer on the “Rust” movie set.In the aftermath of the shooting, the authorities found five additional live rounds on the set, including on top of the cart where props were kept and in a belt that Mr. Baldwin was wearing as a costume piece. The investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office did not answer a key question — how live ammunition ended up on a movie set — and Ms. Reeb said that aspect of the case was still unclear. “We may never answer that question,” she said.The tragedy has resulted in several lawsuits, including from crew members who have accused the production of not properly adhering to safety protocols.During interviews with the sheriff’s office, some crew members described a lack of consistent meetings devoted to on-set safety. The night before the shooting, most of the camera crew had quit over complaints about overnight lodging and other concerns; in an email to other people on set informing them he was leaving, Lane Luper, the head of the camera department, wrote that the filming of gunfight scenes was played “very fast and loose,” citing two accidental weapons discharges.A lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who trained on film sets with her father, a veteran Hollywood armorer named Thell Reed, had previously said she filled two roles on the “Rust” set — as armorer and props assistant — which made it difficult for her to focus fully on her job as armorer.Mr. Baldwin has maintained that he is not responsible for the shooting, saying that Ms. Hutchins had been directing him where to point the gun and that he did not pull the trigger before the gun discharged. He told investigators he had pulled the hammer back and let it go in an action that might have set it off.“I know 1,000 percent I’m not responsible for what happened to her,” Mr. Baldwin told an investigator, Detective Alexandria Hancock, in a phone call following the shooting.Ms. Carmack-Altwies, a Democrat who was elected in 2020, said an F.B.I. analysis of the gun showed “conclusively” that the trigger had been pulled.A crime scene technician took photos of Alec Baldwin on the “Rust” movie set shortly after the fatal shooting of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.The prosecutors said the people they intended to charge this month would not be arrested but would be expected to appear for a virtual court appearance. A judge in New Mexico will then oversee a preliminary hearing on the charges and determine whether there is probable cause to move forward.Ms. Gutierrez-Reed has also accused Seth Kenney, the primary supplier of guns and ammunition for the film, of being responsible for the shooting, alleging in a lawsuit against him and his company that the supply he sent to the set had mixed live ammunition in with dummy rounds.Mr. Kenney has said he checked all of the rounds he provided to the production to ensure they were not live, saying in a statement that handling the guns and ammunition on set was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s responsibility.Last year, Matthew Hutchins, the widower of Ms. Hutchins, agreed to settle his wrongful death lawsuit against the “Rust” production. Under the agreement, Mr. Hutchins would become an executive producer of “Rust,” which had been set to resume filming this month. It was not immediately clear how the planned charges would affect those plans.A lawyer for Mr. Hutchins, Brian J. Panish, said in a statement that he agreed with the decision to bring criminal charges.“It is a comfort to the family that, in New Mexico, no one is above the law,” Mr. Panish said. “We support the charges, will fully cooperate with this prosecution and fervently hope the justice system works to protect the public and hold accountable those who break the law.”Brooks Barnes More

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      India’s Love Story With ‘D.D.L.J.’ Is Still Strong After 27 Years

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      Well past the film’s intermission, the crowd keeps trickling in. Some pay at the ticketing window with a couple of taps on their phone; others dump fistfuls of coins. They are students and office clerks, prostitutes from the waning red-light district nearby, day laborers still chasing dreams in India’s “maximum city,” and the homeless with dreams long deferred.India’s film industry puts about 1,500 stories on the screen annually. But the audience that files every morning into the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai is here for a movie that premiered 27 years ago — and has resonated so intensely that this once-grand 1,100-seat theater has played it every day since, save for a pandemic hiatus.The film, “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” — which translates as “The Big-Hearted Will Take the Bride” and is known as “D.D.L.J.” — is a boy-meets-girl story set against the backdrop of a moment of immense change and unbridled possibility in India.The Indian economy had just opened up, bringing new opportunities, new technologies and new exposure to a rising middle class. But it also brought new strains, as the choices afforded by economic opportunity — to decide your own love and your own life — ran up against the protective traditions of old.In many ways, the India of today looks like the India reflected in the movie. The economy is still on the rise, and it is now about 10 times the size it was in the mid-1990s. A technological revolution, this one digital, has opened new worlds. Women are seeking more freedom in a male-dominated society. And the forces of modernity and conservatism remain in tension as an ascendant political right wing appoints itself the enforcer of conventional values.The sense of unlimited possibility, however, has receded. As the early rewards of liberalization peaked and economic inequities deepened, aspirations of mobility have diminished. For those left behind, the world of “D.D.L.J.” — its story and stars, its music and dialogue — is an escape. For those still striving, it is an inspiration. And for those who have made it, it is a time capsule, the starting point of India’s transformation.Moviegoers at the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai.A scene from “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” which translates as “The Big-Hearted Will Take the Bride.”“It grew and grew and grew and went on to, you know, become an heirloom,” said the actress Kajol, 48, who played the female lead, Simran, in the film. “I have had so many people who told me that, you know, we have made our children sit down and watch ‘D.D.L.J.,’ we have made our grandchildren sit down and watch — and I was like, there are grandchildren now?”She burst out laughing. “Children I am fine with. But grandchildren?”When the pandemic closed theaters for a year, many speculated that “D.D.L.J.’s” record run would end. But the film is back on for its 11:30 a.m. slot at Maratha Mandir, often drawing crowds larger than those at afternoon screenings of the latest releases.Some of those who show up have watched it here so many times that they have lost count — 50, 100, hundreds.A taxi driver who was in the line outside the theater one morning this fall had seen it six times, a welder about a dozen. A gray-bearded merchant of secondhand goods claimed about 50 viewings, the same for a 33-year-old delivery worker.Then there were the regular regulars, those who trek here nearly every day. Madhu Sudan Varma, a 68-year-old homeless man who has a part-time job feeding neighborhood cats, comes about 20 mornings a month.The woman with her head wrapped in a plastic bag?“I come every day,” she said. “I like it every day.”No one knows her real name — it may be Jaspim, but even she is unsure. It doesn’t matter, because everyone calls her by the name she prefers: Simran, just like the star on the screen.People buying tickets for the film at the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai.Fans of the movie, which is known by its initials D.D.L.J., taking selfies in front of a poster for the film in Mumbai.Lying at night in the room she keeps as a prostitute in Kamathipura, Mumbai’s red-light district, she sometimes dreams of the film’s scenes, she says. In the morning, she makes sure she doesn’t miss the show — not even on this day when the henna she used to dye her graying hair hadn’t yet dried. She would rather come wearing a plastic bag than not make it.More on IndiaOn the Big Screen: A Mumbai theater has shown the movie “D.D.L.J.” nearly every day since 1995. In many ways, the India of today looks like the India on the screen.India’s Cram City: In Kota, students from across the country pay steep fees to be tutored for elite-college admissions exams — which most of them will fail.Renting as a Single Woman: As they delay or reject marriage and live on their own, single working women in India face an often infuriating quest for housing.Delivery Apps: Fueled by billions of dollars in investments, Indian companies are rushing to cut delivery prices and wait times, relying on an army of low-paid, harried drivers.“I don’t see any other films, just this one,” she said. “I feel great when I come here. I get lost in the songs and dance.”‘Live Your Life’“D.D.L.J.” is a love story. But it is also about compromise.Kajol’s character, Simran Singh, is brought up in London, though her father uses the income from the family’s corner store to raise his children in the traditions of India.On a European trip with friends, Simran meets Raj Malhotra, played by Shah Rukh Khan, a wealthy young man raised by a single father. The rest of the film’s three hours are spent on the couple’s efforts to persuade Simran’s conservative father to let go of the arranged marriage he had planned for his daughter and bless their union.“Go, Simran, go,” the father declares at the end, after the film barrels through tears, bloody fistfights and many songs of longing. “Live your life.”Kajol said that the movie’s middle path had broken new ground. Before “D.D.L.J.,” she said, “we only had films that talked about either this way or that — either we had films that celebrated marriages and everybody was involved from uncles to aunties, or it was ‘us against the world, we will fight it out, we will live together, die together.’ I think ‘D.D.L.J.’ came up with a very simple thought — to say that maybe we can walk a line.”When the movie was released in 1995, Kajol and Mr. Khan were both relative newcomers. Kajol went on to become one of the most successful actresses in Hindi cinema. Mr. Khan, 57, found even greater fame, becoming one of India’s most recognizable faces.Both actors benefited from an Indian entertainment industry that was itself in transition, as money flooded in with the country’s economic liberalization. Now, the country has over 200 million households with televisions, up from 50 million then. Many more people can afford cinema tickets. And India, which recently became the world’s fifth-largest economy, is expected to have one billion smartphone users by 2026.Film stars have become permanent fixtures on billboards and on television commercials. India is a huge market — it is projected to soon pass China as the world’s most populous country — and a star’s simple post of sponsored content on platforms like Instagram can be lucrative. Actors who would once perform in different films in the same change of clothes now find themselves with unfathomable wealth.Every day, fans throng outside Mr. Khan’s seaside home in Mumbai, the heart of India’s film industry, hoping for a sighting. Buses passing the road in front of his house slow down so passengers can take selfies.The film’s lead male actor, Shah Rukh Khan, greeting fans outside his home in Mumbai on his 57th birthday.A crowd gathered outside Mr. Khan’s house in Mumbai to get a glimpse of the popular actor on his birthday. He has challenged perceptions of masculinity in Indian filmmaking.On his birthday, thousands gather, waiting and chanting for Mr. Khan — and he does not disappoint. He climbs up a caged platform, throwing kisses at the fans, before breaking into what has become his signature move: a leaned-back spread of the arms.Bollywood has long favored those with legacy and family ties. Mr. Khan resonates as an outsider, a child of middle-class struggle in Delhi who lost both of his parents when he was young.The towering residence he now occupies with his family “is a middle-class monument to a man who didn’t own property,” said the Indian economist Shrayana Bhattacharya. “He became this prism and this concept. He represents this idea of mobility.”Ms. Bhattacharya wrote a book, “Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh,” about how Mr. Khan symbolizes the possibilities that only India’s liberalized economy could produce, and what he has meant to young working women as he has challenged perceptions of masculinity in Indian cinema.Taking advantage of new channels of information, he has built an image of an empathetic partner who listens, helps with household chores and shares the spotlight with female co-stars.The power of this image, he said in one interview, has become such that he has become “an employee of the myth of Shah Rukh Khan.” It is so potent that young women, Ms. Bhattacharya said, “want to be him” rather than want to “marry him,” the emotion usually associated with older matinee idols.To some women, Mr. Khan — or at least his persona — is a reminder of the ways Indian men have not changed. Surbhi Bhatia, a data and development researcher in Mumbai, said she often binge-watched his talks as an antidote to the restrictive male energy around her. If she is feeling low or uncertain, she strolls down to linger outside his seaside residence.“You know when he spreads those arms,” she said about Mr. Khan’s signature move, “there is space to just go in.”In many ways, women have yet to achieve the economic promise of the new India. Only about a quarter of women participate in the work force, less than half the rate of all other major economies.For women who have found economic opportunity, society has been slow to accept their independence. Having their own incomes — or even just a smartphone — has translated into some new freedom. But when a husband comes into the picture, Ms. Bhatia said, it brings another layer of permission and the forfeiture of leisure hours to household chores.“The phone has done so much to give access, but not solved the larger problem,” she said. “It’s making us more lonely.”Surbhi Bhatia, a fan of Mr. Khan, outside his house in Mumbai. “When he spreads those arms,” she said of his signature move, “there is space to just go in.”Atul Loke for The New York TimesKajol, the film’s lead actress, at her office in Mumbai.India is still trying to decide where to set the line that “D.D.L.J.” suggested it walk between conservatism and modernity. Added to the tension is a Hindu-first fervor under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with Muslims in particular becoming a target. Mr. Khan, despite his crosscutting appeal, has not been spared.This month, right-wing groups vandalized cinemas promoting Mr. Khan’s latest film after a trailer showed its female star, Deepika Padukone, wearing a saffron bikini. The groups called the choice of saffron an offense to Hinduism, which is closely associated with the color.Mr. Khan is a product of a secular India — a Muslim who attended a Christian school and married a Hindu. Faced with attacks like these, he has largely stopped commenting on the country’s political direction.“I am a Muslim, my wife is a Hindu and my kids are Hindustan,” Mr. Khan said on a television show in 2020, using another word for India. “When they went to school, they had to write their religion. My daughter came to me once and asked, ‘What is our religion?’ I simply wrote in her form that we are Indian.”‘Love Doesn’t End’At the Maratha Mandir cinema, the logic of keeping one film running for nearly three decades is simple economics: New films could be hit or miss, but the crowd for “D.D.L.J.” is steady.“This picture is evergreen,” said Manoj Desai, the cinema’s 72-year-old executive director, “because it tells the story of true love. Because love doesn’t end.”The theater’s position near two transportation hubs ensures constant traffic. And it helps that the tickets are cheap: 30 rupees for downstairs seats and 40 for those in the balcony, or about 40 to 50 cents, a quarter of the price for admission to new releases.Ticket prices for the movie are part of the draw, as is the air conditioning inside the theater.Manoj Desai, the executive director of the Maratha Mandir cinema. “This picture is evergreen,” he said of the movie, “because it tells the story of true love.” “Three hours in air-conditioning, 40 rupees. Who will refuse that?” Mr. Desai said.The interview with Mr. Desai was interrupted by frequent phone calls, including one from his wife. “Home minister,” he said as he picked up her call.He and his wife, who are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, went through a caste-based love struggle of their own, though with a different ending from the one in “D.D.L.J.”When her wealthy Jain parents refused Mr. Desai, a Gujarati Brahmin, they eloped and made their marriage official in a faraway temple. Her family kept looking for them for two years, trying to register her as a minor to charge Mr. Desai with kidnapping.“Love has changed in the sense that breakups are easy,” Mr. Desai lamented.As he spoke, reporters called to inquire about a recent storm Mr. Desai had kicked up. In a scathing video interview, he had called a rising star “arrogant” for talking about taking his films directly to streaming services. The star was sent by his father on a private jet to Mr. Desai’s office to touch his feet and apologize.With Hindi cinema struggling to regain momentum after its pandemic lull, many producers and stars have opted to take their films directly to streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon.To purists like Mr. Desai, the growing trend is blasphemy. “There is the money, but sirrrrr,” he said, stretching and rolling his “r.” “What about theater? What about the big screen?”For the entire time that “D.D.L.J.” has been showing on Mr. Desai’s big screen, Jagjivan Maru has been the projectionist. He will soon retire after 50 years.Jagjivan Maru, the projectionist at the Maratha Mandir cinema, has been working there for more than 50 years, but plans to soon retire.The film draws a seemingly unending stream of viewers with themes that resonate across generations.When he sets up the day’s show, staff downstairs change into their uniforms, prepare the popcorn and samosas in the dimly lit corner concession stand and mop the marble floor between the rows of worn-out seats.“For 10 years, the hall would be full — there would queues for tickets,” he said about the film’s release in 1995. “After 10 years, it cooled off a bit — but the passion hasn’t died.”As customers line up to enter the theater, the guards frisking them and checking their bags repeat one reminder: “Don’t put your feet on the seats.” They know it’s futile, because many come precisely for that — to escape the city’s heat, to put up their feet.Mr. Varma, the 68-year-old homeless man, arrives at the ticket counter with his two bags of belongings, containing a blanket, some changes of clothes and his water bottle.He sleeps in a parked auto rickshaw near a Buddha statue. Waking before dawn, he feeds about 50 neighborhood cats, for which an NGO pays him 100 rupees — roughly $1.30 — a day. He worked in the family’s furniture upholstery business before a dispute forced him to the streets. He has lost everyone dear in his life, from his siblings to his parents.But one person resurfaced about 15 years ago: an unrequited love that had left him a bachelor. Caste differences made their union impossible, just as they prevent many love stories even today. The woman got married in 1984 and went on to have children who are now married.The rekindling is one of friendship. They speak by phone once a month; he asks about her life, her children, and she asks if he is eating well.“There were others who would call in the past,” Mr. Varma said. “There is no one else now.”Mr. Varma takes his seat on the ground floor of the cinema hall. In the row in front of him is Simran, the prostitute.Madhu Sudan Varma sleeping in an auto rickshaw parked on a street in Mumbai. He comes to about 20 screenings a month.Simran, so named after the movie’s lead female character, dancing to one of the movie’s many songs.When the movie’s wildly popular songs come on, Simran shimmies in her seat, singing along and getting up to dance in the aisle. She mimics the dialogue. And when the Simran on the screen waves goodbye to Raj, the Simran in the theater also waves her hand in goodbye.Every time the light from the screen reflects on Mr. Varma’s face, he is lounged in his seat, his soft eyes glued to the film.“I find peace here,” Mr. Varma said. “I get a little calm.” More