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      Stream These 10 Titles Before They Leave Netflix This Month

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      U.S. subscribers are losing a bunch of titles in April. Here are the best of the bunch.Oscar season is over (finally), but this month’s slate of movies leaving Netflix in the United States is full of winners and nominees past and present, as well as a handful of cult items and action epics. Toss these titles — nine movies and one favorite ’90s TV show — into your list before they’re gone. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ (April 4)Although his most recent feature, the Oscar-winning “The Favourite,” was decidedly more audience friendly, the Greek writer and director Yorgos Lanthimos has carved out a niche as one of the more provocative (sometimes mercilessly so) filmmakers of his time. After his first English language film, the pitch-black comedy “The Lobster,” he reunited with Colin Farrell for this heavy slab of psychological horror about a heart surgeon whose strange friendship with a twisted teenage boy (Barry Keoghan) prompts a series of horrifying events. Lanthimos masterfully creates a feeling of creeping dread and uncomfortable uncertainty, much of it thanks to Keoghan, who harnesses a truly disturbing screen presence; like Farrell, he is in “The Batman,” and moviegoers who thought that was a bleak picture may find this one too hard to swallow.Stream it here.‘The Florida Project’ (April 5)Sean Baker is one of our most adventurous and emotionally curious filmmakers, his work dropping in on highly specific subcultures and scenes without feeling distanced or anthropological. In this 2017 comedy-drama, he settles in to “The Magic Castle,” a budget motel located near Walt Disney World, its clientele a mix of hoodwinked tourists and struggling long-timers like Halley (Bria Vinaite) and her six-year-old daughter, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince). Baker carefully situates his contrast of haves and have-nots; Disney World is only a short walk away, but the lives enjoyed by its patrons seem impossibly out of reach. Willem Dafoe picked up a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his work as the motel’s good-natured manager.Stream it here.‘Miss Sloane’ (April 18)The newly minted Oscar winner Jessica Chastain stars in this political thriller from John Madden (the “Shakespeare in Love” director, not the other one) as a tough-as-nails D.C. lobbyist who finds herself in the sights of the powerful gun lobby. Chastain made a specialty of these sturdy, sharp women who get the job done — the character is not far removed from her roles in “Zero Dark Thirty,” “A Most Violent Year,” and “Molly’s Game” — but she finds the shadings and contours that make the character unique while Jonathan Perera’s smart screenplay feels like an authentic peek at how the sausage is made in Washington.Stream it here.‘The Artist’ (April 25)Oscar loves movies about the movies, and this 2011 comedy from the writer and director Michel Hazanavicius (which won five prizes, including best picture) isn’t just a film about the industry: It is steeped in stylistic and narrative influences from throughout film history. Hazanavicius tells his story of the bumpy transition from silent to sound cinema by dramatizing that transition, recalling the inside-Hollywood angle of “Singin’ in the Rain”; the secondary story, about a fading star’s romance with a rising talent, evokes the many remakes of “A Star is Born.” Yet “The Artist” isn’t just a game of “spot the homage.” The filmmaking is clever and the performances are inspired, particularly those of the best actor winner Jean Dujardin, of the best supporting actress nominee Bérénice Bejo and of John Goodman, cast perfectly as a cigar-chomping studio head.Stream it here.‘Dawson’s Creek’: Seasons 1-6 (April 30)Fresh off the success of his script for the original “Scream,” the screenwriter Kevin Williamson got the greenlight from the nascent WB network to create this long-running drama, chronicling the lives of loves of a group of teens in the fictional hamlet of Capeside, Mass. Williamson’s winkingly self-aware style doesn’t go down quite as smoothly here as it does in the “Scream” films, but it offers its own trashy pleasures, its scripts rife with romances and hookups and unrequited crushes. And the show is now noteworthy for its keen casting eye: Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, James Van Der Beek and Michelle Williams make up the core ensemble, with Scott Foley, Jane Lynch, Busy Philipps and Seth Rogen among the recurring cast.Stream it here.‘Léon: The Professional’ (April 30)Natalie Portman made her film debut in this 1994 action picture from the French writer and director Luc Besson (“La Femme Nikita”), playing a young woman whose family is executed by corrupt D.E.A. agents. She talks her enigmatic neighbor (Jean Reno) into providing not only refuge but also training; he is a contract killer, and she wants revenge. Besson stages a series of spectacular set pieces, each more ingenious than the last, culminating in a barn burner in which Leon seems to take on the entire New York Police Department. Portman is already a movie star, and Reno is quietly effective — an excellent counterpoint to Gary Oldman, who chews scenery by the fistful as the most unhinged of the bad guys.Stream it here.‘Snakes on a Plane’ (April 30)This 2006 action film from David R. Ellis was one of the first films that was, in effect, rewritten by the internet. Based solely on its title and the presence of Samuel L. Jackson, the movie became something of a viral sensation before its release, prompting its filmmakers to reshoot scenes and rework the tone to mirror more closely the goofy B-movie its “fans” had come to expect. The result is a bit of a mess, particularly in its laborious first act. But once the snakes start to attack at the 30-minute mark, it’s goofy, gory fun, a spirited riff on ’70s disaster movies, with an abundance of gruesome but funny shock effects and an admirably game performance from the unflappable Jackson.Stream it here.‘Snatch’ (April 30)The director Guy Ritchie made a big splash on the indie circuit with his low-budget, high-energy crime comedy “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” in 1999; this successor was also a kind of bigger-budget remake, pursuing similar situations and aesthetics but with more resources and bigger names. Chief among the big name actors is Brad Pitt, who appears under a mop of messy hair and barks most of his dialogue in an indecipherable dialect — hinting at the character-actor work he pursued, as a sideline, as he approached middle age. “Snatch” is fast, funny and flashy; it is style over substance, sure, but what style.Stream it here.‘Stripes’ (April 30)Three years before achieving total cultural ubiquity with “Ghostbusters,” Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and the director Ivan Reitman teamed up for this uproariously funny service comedy. Murray and Ramis (who was also one of the writers) play slacker pals who, more out of boredom than patriotic duty, enlist in the U.S. Army, where they do their best to turn the disciplined, humorless environment of basic training into a nonstop party. It’s like Abbott & Costello’s “Buck Privates” crossed with “Animal House,” and it’s exactly as fun as that sounds. Warren Oates is a superb foil as their drill sergeant, while John Candy, Joe Flaherty, John Larroquette, Judge Reinhold, P.J. Soles, Dave Thomas and Sean Young turn up in memorable supporting roles.Stream it here.‘The Town’ (April 30)Ben Affleck followed the triumph of his feature directorial debut, “Gone Baby Gone,” with this taut and gripping crime picture, adapted from the Chuck Hogan novel “Prince of Thieves.” Affleck co-wrote, directed and stars as Doug MacRay, the ringleader of a group of tough Boston thieves who hatch a plot to steal millions in cash from Fenway Park — a heist complicated by shifting allegiances, a tenacious F.B.I. agent (Jon Hamm) and Doug’s blossoming romance with a potential witness (Rebecca Hall). Affleck’s sure hand with actors — Chris Cooper, Blake Lively, Pete Postlethwaite and Jeremy Renner round out the ensemble — and his firm sense of time and place give the film a confidence that more than makes up for the familiarity of its storytelling.Stream it here.Also leaving: ‘August: Osage County’ (April 26); ‘Moneyball,’ ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ ‘Superman Returns’ (April 30). More

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      Will Smith’s Slap Could Hurt His Family’s Brand

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      Will Smith has spent decades radiating boundless likability. His family has become known for sharing therapy sessions online. His smack at the Oscars has complicated all of that.From his start as a goofy, G-rated rapper and sitcom star through his carefully managed rise as a blockbuster action hero, Will Smith has spent decades radiating boundless likability. But his amiable image was something of a facade, he wrote in his memoir, noting that a therapist had nicknamed his nice guy persona “Uncle Fluffy.”Mr. Smith said he had concocted this people-pleasing demeanor as a means of deflection during his turbulent childhood. “As an adult, he became my armor and my shield,” he wrote. “Uncle Fluffy paid the bills.”Mr. Smith wrote that he had another, less public, side: “the General,” a punisher who emerged when joviality didn’t get the job done. “When the General shows up, people are shocked and confused,” he wrote in “Will,” his 2021 memoir. “It was sweetness, sweetness, sweetness and then sour, sour, sourness.”Both sides of Mr. Smith, 53, were on display on one of the world’s biggest stages last week when he suddenly slapped the comedian Chris Rock during the telecast of the Academy Awards ceremony, complaining that Mr. Rock had insulted his wife of 25 years, Jada Pinkett Smith, with a joke. Soon afterward, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor, and wept through his polarizing acceptance speech. Then he was off to the Vanity Fair party, dancing to “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It,” his chart-topping hit from the last century, as though nothing had happened.Now Mr. Smith has resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that just honored him with an Oscar, and which has condemned his actions and opened disciplinary proceedings against him. And he is confronting the very real possibility that a night which should have been the crowning moment of his professional career could wind up damaging a family brand rooted in his seemingly-authentic congeniality.For several years, a growing branch of Smith family enterprises has adeptly delivered reality-style revelation and emotional intimacy across an expanding number of platforms. Beyond Mr. Smith’s acting career and his introspective, best-selling memoir, there is the popular “Red Table Talk” show on Facebook Watch, in which Ms. Pinkett Smith, their daughter, Willow, and Jada’s mother, Adrienne Banfield Norris, hold forth on everything from racial identity to workout routines to the Smiths’ unconventional marriage.Mr. Smith’s upcoming projects include “Emancipation,” a $100 million, high-prestige drama for Apple; an action thriller at Netflix; a remake of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” where he would star opposite Kevin Hart for Paramount; and the second installment of a travel series for National Geographic on Disney+. They are all under the banner of Westbrook Studios, the film and television arm of the media company that the Smith family started in 2019. It was valued at $600 million earlier this year when an investment firm bought a 10 percent stake.Could The Slap derail all that?It was not clear whether the incident would affect any of his current projects, like “Welcome to Earth” for National Geographic on Disney+.Disney+, via Associated PressNow that Mr. Smith may not be welcome at the Oscars and his public reputation has been tarnished, studios may be wary of hiring him at the moment for lead roles in their biggest films. The companies behind Mr. Smith’s upcoming projects declined to comment on whether they were altering their plans in light of recent events. But three talent agents, who were granted anonymity to describe private negotiations, said there had been indications that at least some of his upcoming projects could be hanging in the balance.Several public relations specialists who focus on crisis management warned that the incident could erode the good will that the Smiths have built up, while others suggested the fallout could be contained. “His brand is currently damaged goods worldwide,” said Mike Paul, a public relations expert. The Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith, who the academy said refused to leave following the incident, apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the academy denounced his actions.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.The veteran television producer Jonathan Murray, who has dealt with on- and offscreen drama and family brands in programming like “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” said that the outcome for the Smiths depends on what steps they, and particularly Mr. Smith, take now.“I think most people would give him the benefit of the doubt,” said Mr. Murray, a co-founder of the production company Bunim Murray, which pioneered reality TV. “But it really will rest on whether we believe that he is authentically dealing with this.”Several friends and colleagues of Mr. Smith described the Oscars altercation as a puzzling aberration for a man who has spent his career almost fanatically hewing to professional standards.“What happened was inconsistent with any behavior I’ve seen working with Will Smith,” said Elizabeth Cantillon, a producer of “Concussion,” the 2015 film in which he played a doctor battling the N.F.L. “He was always exquisite. I think he’s part of the collective breakdown we are all having.”The incident came as Mr. Smith has appeared to be in a period of transition: seeking out loftier and more personal roles; expanding his media empire beyond film and television; openly discussing the abuse he witnessed his father inflict on his mother; and working on what he has described as self-understanding, through therapy, meditation and even hallucinogens.“Strategizing about being the biggest movie star in the world — that is all completely over,” Mr. Smith said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in December. He added: “I want to take roles where I get to look at myself, where I get to look at my family, I get to look at ideas that are important to me. Everything in my life is more centered on spiritual growth and elevation.”Mr. Smith starred on the NBC sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” in the 1990s.Alice S. Hall/NBC, via Getty ImagesMr. Smith, a Philadelphia native, started performing as a teenager in the ’80s, in the rap duo D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and quickly earned a Grammy — the first ever for best rap performance — for “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” A chance encounter with the producer Quincy Jones led to him starring in the hit NBC sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” which ran from 1990 to 1996, featuring a hip-hop theme many children of that era can still recite. It was perhaps the last bit of his career that happened by accident. (Mr. Smith’s company recently developed “Bel-Air,” a dramatic reboot which just finished its first of two seasons on Peacock as the nascent streamer’s most-watched original series.)Mr. Smith then set out to make himself the biggest movie star in the world, and by many measures succeeded. With a business partner, James Lassiter, Mr. Smith plotted out, with actuarial zeal, the commonalities among hit movies: special effects, aliens, a love story. He became the face of summer blockbusters, with films including “Men in Black” and “Independence Day.” In his memoir, written with Mark Manson, he provides a handy, if boastful, chart of his prowess: from 2002 to 2008, he had eight consecutive films gross more than $100 million domestically.For the fans, he was always accommodating. But the mantle was heavy.“I am a Black man in Hollywood — in order to sustain my position, I can’t get caught slipping, not even once,” Mr. Smith wrote in his book. “I had to be perfect at all times.”Mr. Smith became the face of summer blockbusters with a string of hit films, including “Men in Black” with Tommy Lee Jones.Columbia Pictures/Getty ImagesPart of the image that Mr. Smith sought to project had to do with his seemingly-enviable family life: his creatively inclined children — Willow, 21, his son Jaden, 23, and Trey, 29, a son from his first marriage — and his union with Ms. Pinkett Smith, 50, an actress and musician. That portrait of stability cracked in recent years, especially when Ms. Pinkett Smith acknowledged, in a 2020 episode of “Red Table Talk,” that the couple had gone through a separation, during which she had been involved in what she called an “entanglement” with an R&B singer, August Alsina.Leveraging “Red Table Talk” as a sort of public therapy session, the Smiths have laid bare the details of some of their fiercest disputes, sometimes in the presence of Willow and Ms. Banfield Norris, Mr. Smith’s mother-in-law, who is known to viewers as Gammy. In one episode in 2018 the Smiths sought to dispel rumors, noting that they are neither swingers nor Scientologists, after reports over the years that they had donated money to causes affiliated with Scientology.“We have devoted ourselves to each other in a spiritual sense — spiritual, emotional — it’s like whatever she needs, she can count on me for the rest of her life,” Mr. Smith said in the episode. “We don’t have any deal breakers.”On “Red Table Talk,” their Facebook Watch show, topics include everything from racial identity to the Smiths’ unconventional marriage. Facebook WatchThe revelations about their marriage were met with public derision, including on the awards circuit. In mid-March, at the BAFTAs, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars, the host, the comedian Rebel Wilson, joked about it when she mentioned Mr. Smith’s win for “King Richard.”“Personally,” she said, “I thought his best performance in the past year has been being OK with all of his wife’s boyfriends.” Mr. Smith was not present at that ceremony.At this year’s Academy Awards, even before Mr. Rock took the stage, Regina Hall alluded to the Smiths’ relationship in a comic bit in which she suggestively asked to personally inspect some of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors, joking that their Covid test results had been lost. “Will Smith,” she said. “You’re married, but you know what, you’re on the list and looks like Jada approved you. So you get on up here.” He laughed and stayed seated.What did bring Mr. Smith to his feet, striding purposefully across the room to strike Mr. Rock, was an ad-libbed line about Ms. Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. It stung, Mr. Smith explained later, because Ms. Pinkett Smith has alopecia, which leads to hair loss. “A joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear, and I reacted emotionally,” Mr. Smith explained in the apology to Mr. Rock and others he posted on Instagram Monday evening. For his part, Mr. Rock said at his comedy show on Wednesday that he was still processing the event. (A representative for Mr. Smith declined to comment. Representatives for Ms. Pinkett Smith and Mr. Rock did not respond to requests for comment.)For many viewers and fans, especially Black fans, the incident involving three of the highest-profile Black artists in Hollywood was fraught and did not lend itself to easy judgment. “It’s a really complicated moment, because of all the ways that it resonates with gender and race and power and brand,” said Miriam Petty, a film historian and professor at Northwestern University who studies Black stardom.Some commentators criticized Mr. Rock for what they deemed a low-blow joke. Others, like the actress Tiffany Haddish, who co-starred with Ms. Pinkett Smith in the comedy “Girls Trip,” applauded Mr. Smith for seeming to defend his wife’s honor, which Dr. Petty characterized as understandable in a world in which Black women and other women of color are not afforded the same social protections as their white counterparts. But was that stance anti-feminist? Did it glorify violence? “Again — messy, messy, messy,” Dr. Petty said.Since turning 50, Mr. Smith has relaxed, to some degree, his public image. A recent YouTube series, “Best Shape of My Life,” that ostensibly targeted his non-superhero dad bod was really about unbuckling his own strictures of behavior. He has traveled without security for the first time in years; at last learned to swim; and tried to come to terms, after the death of his father in 2016, with the toll that relationship took.In the statement announcing his resignation from the academy, Mr. Smith said, “Change takes time and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.”Now, as Mr. Smith seeks to rebound from this episode, he seems all but certain to do it with his family around him. In the aftermath of the Oscars, Ms. Pinkett Smith posted a message on Instagram: “This is a season for healing,” it read, using a watchword well-known to the 11 million Facebook followers of “Red Table Talk.” “And I’m here for it.”Julia Jacobs contributed reporting. Susan Beachy contributed research. More

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      Helping Hollywood Avoid Claims of Bias Is Now a Growing Business

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      Studios are signing up consultants to help make sure their movies or shows don’t raise any cultural red flags.In the summer of 2020, not long after the murder of George Floyd spurred a racial reckoning in America, Carri Twigg’s phone kept ringing.Ms. Twigg, a founding partner of a production company named Culture House, was asked over and over again if she could take a look at a television or movie script and raise any red flags, particularly on race.Culture House, which employs mostly women of color, had traditionally specialized in documentaries. But after a few months of fielding the requests about scripts, they decided to make a business of it: They opened a new division dedicated solely to consulting work.“The frequency of the check-ins was not slowing down,” Ms. Twigg said. “It was like, oh, we need to make this a real thing that we offer consistently — and get paid for.”Though the company has been consulting for a little more than a year — for clients like Paramount Pictures, MTV and Disney — that work now accounts for 30 percent of Culture House’s revenue.Culture House is hardly alone. In recent years, entertainment executives have vowed to make a genuine commitment to diversity, but are still routinely criticized for falling short. To signal that they are taking steps to address the issue, Hollywood studios have signed contracts with numerous companies and nonprofits to help them avoid the reputational damage that comes with having a movie or an episode of a TV show face accusations of bias.“When a great idea is there and then it’s only talked about because of the social implications, that must be heartbreaking for creators who spend years on something,” Ms. Twigg said. “To get it into the world and the only thing anyone wants to talk about are the ways it came up short. So we’re trying to help make that not happen.”On Being Transgender in AmericaElite Sports: The case of the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has stirred a debate about the nature of athleticism in women’s sports.Transgender Youth: A photographer documented the lives of transgender youth. She shared some thoughts on what she saw.Remote Work: Remote work during the pandemic offered some people an opportunity to move forward with a transition. They are now preparing to return to the office.Corporate World: What is it like to transition while working for Wall Street? A Goldman Sachs’ employee shares her experience.The consulting work runs the gamut of a production. The consulting companies sometimes are asked about casting decisions as well as marketing plans. And they may also read scripts to search for examples of bias and to scrutinize how characters are positioned in a story.“It’s not only about what characters say, it’s also about when they don’t speak,” Ms. Twigg said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, there’s not enough agency for this character, you’re using this character as an ornament, you’re going to get dinged for that.’”When a consulting firm is on retainer, it can also come with a guaranteed check every month from a studio. And it’s a revenue stream developed only recently.Michelle K. Sugihara, the executive director of Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, a nonprofit.Tracy Nguyen for The New York Times“It really exploded in the last two years or so,” said Michelle K. Sugihara, the executive director of Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, a nonprofit. The group, called CAPE, is on retainer to some of the biggest Hollywood studios, including Netflix, Paramount, Warner Bros., Amazon, Sony and A24.Of the 100 projects that CAPE has consulted on, Ms. Sugihara said, roughly 80 percent have come since 2020, and they “really increased” after the Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021. “That really ramped up attention on our community,” she said.Ms. Sugihara said her group could be actively involved throughout the production process. In one example, she said she told a studio that all of the actors playing the heroes in an upcoming scripted project appeared to be light-skinned East Asian people whereas the villains were portrayed by darker-skinned East Asian actors.“That’s a red flag,” she said. “And we should talk about how those images may be harmful. Sometimes it’s just things that people aren’t even conscious about until you point it out.”Ms. Sugihara would not mention the name of the project or the studio behind it. In interviews, many cited nondisclosure agreements with the studios and a reluctance to embarrass a filmmaker as reasons they could not divulge specifics.Studios such as Paramount Pictures have been hiring consulting firms like Culture House and CAPE.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesSarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD, the L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization, said her group had been doing consulting work informally for years with the networks and studios. Finally, she decided to start charging the studios for their labor — work that she compared to “billable hours.”“Here we were consulting with all these content creators across Hollywood and not being compensated,” said Ms. Ellis, the organization’s president since 2013. “When I started at GLAAD we couldn’t pay our bills. And meanwhile here we are with the biggest studios and networks in the world, helping them tell stories that were hits. And I said this doesn’t make sense.”In 2018, she created the GLAAD Media Institute — if the networks or studios wanted any help in the future, they’d have to become a paying member of the institute.Initially, there was some pushback but the networks and studios would eventually come around. In 2018, there were zero members of the GLAAD Media Institute. By the end of 2021, that number had swelled to 58, with nearly every major studio and network in Hollywood now a paying member.Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD, the advocacy organization, at its office in Manhattan.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesScott Turner Schofield, who has spent some time working as a consultant for GLAAD, has also been advising networks and studios on how to accurately depict transgender people for years. But he said the work had increased so significantly in recent years that he was brought on board as an executive producer for a forthcoming horror movie produced by Blumhouse.“I’ve gone from someone who was a part-time consultant — barely eking by — to being an executive producer,” he said.Those interviewed said that it was a win-win arrangement between the consultancies and the studios.“The studios at the end of the day, they want to produce content but they want to make money,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the advocacy organization Color of Change. “Making money can be impeded because of poor decisions and not having the right people at the table. So the studios are going to want to seek that.”He did caution, however, that simply bringing on consultants was not an adequate substitute for the structural change that many advocates want to see in Hollywood.“This doesn’t change the rules with who gets to produce content and who gets to make the final decisions of what gets on the air,” he said. “It’s fine to bring folks in from the outside but that in the end is insufficient to the fact that across the entertainment industry there is still a problem in terms of not enough Black and brown people with power in the executive ranks.”Still, the burgeoning field of cultural consultancy work may be here to stay. Ms. Twigg, who helped found Culture House with Raeshem Nijhon and Nicole Galovski, said that the volume of requests she was getting was “illustrative of how seriously it’s being taken, and how comprehensively it’s being brought into the fabric of doing business.”“From a business standpoint, it’s a way for us to capitalize on the expertise that we have gathered as people of color who have been alive in America for 30 or 40 years,” she said. More

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      in Television

      Will Smith Resigns From Academy After Slapping Chris Rock at Oscars

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      The producer of the telecast said that Smith had been asked to leave after slapping Rock, and that he had urged officials not to “physically remove” him. LOS ANGELES — Will Smith, who slapped the comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars, said Friday that he was resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, saying that he had “betrayed” its trust with conduct that was “shocking, painful, and inexcusable.”The sudden announcement came late Friday afternoon, days after the Academy had condemned Mr. Smith’s actions and opened an inquiry into the incident. “I have directly responded to the Academy’s disciplinary hearing notice, and I will fully accept any and all consequences for my conduct,” he said in a statement on Friday. “I deprived other nominees and winners of their opportunity to celebrate and be celebrated for their extraordinary work,” he said in the statement. “I am heartbroken.”He said that he would “accept any further consequences the board deems appropriate.”“Change takes time,” he concluded, “and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.”The academy said that it accepted his resignation. “We have received and accepted Mr. Will Smith’s immediate resignation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” David Rubin, its president, said in a statement. “We will continue to move forward with our disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith for violations of the Academy’s Standards of Conduct, in advance of our next scheduled board meeting on April 18.”Now that he has resigned, Mr. Smith will no longer have access to academy screenings and events. He will also not be able to vote in the Academy Awards. However, he could still be nominated for an award, since being a member is not a requirement for eligibility. Mr. Smith’s resignation came roughly 12 hours after Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast, spoke publicly about the episode for the first time. In an interview with Good Morning America” on ABC, the network which also broadcasts the Oscars, Mr. Packer said that after Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the ceremony, he urged the Academy leadership not to “physically remove” him from the theater in the middle of the live broadcast.Mr. Packer said he had learned from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there were discussions of plans to “physically remove” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he said he immediately approached academy officials and told them that he believed Mr. Rock did not want to “make a bad situation worse.”The Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith, who the academy said refused to leave following the incident, apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the academy denounced his actions.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.“I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time,” Mr. Packer said. “Because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It has been explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave.”In the interview, Mr. Packer also said that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling.”“He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” he said of Mr. Rock.Someone close to Mr. Rock who asked to speak anonymously because the Academy’s inquiry into the incident is ongoing said that Mr. Rock was never asked directly if he wanted Mr. Smith removed. Had he been asked, it was not clear how Mr. Rock would have responded, the person said. Mr. Rock was only asked if he wanted to press charges, and he said that he did not, the person said.Mr. Packer said that, like many viewers at home, he had originally thought the slap might be part of an unplanned comedic bit, and that he was not entirely sure until he spoke with Mr. Rock backstage that Mr. Smith had actually hit the comedian.“I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali,” Mr. Packer recalled Mr. Rock telling him.Mr. Packer said that Mr. Smith reached out and apologized to him the morning after the Oscars. And he praised Mr. Rock for having kept his cool. “Chris was keeping his head when everyone else was losing theirs,” he said.“I’ve never felt so immediately devastated,” Mr. Packer said of the incident.Asked if, after hearing Mr. Smith’s acceptance speech, he wished that the actor had left the ceremony, Mr. Packer said that he did, noting that Mr. Smith had not used his remarks to express real contrition and apologize to Mr. Rock.“If he wasn’t going to give that speech which made it truly better, then yes, yes,” Mr. Packer said when asked if he wished Mr. Smith had left the ceremony. “Because now you don’t have the optics of somebody who committed this act, didn’t nail it in terms of a conciliatory acceptance speech in that moment, who then continued to be in the room.”Mr. Smith did not apologize to Mr. Rock until Monday evening, after the Academy had condemned his actions and initiated disciplinary proceedings against him. Mr. Packer’s comments came after days of questions about why Mr. Smith had seemed to face no repercussions for striking a presenter on live television.The academy said in a statement earlier this week that Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the awards ceremony following the slap, but had remained. Then several publications questioned that account, citing anonymous sources, and reported that Mr. Packer had suggested he stay. Shortly after the ceremony ended Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement saying that the person who had been slapped had “declined to file a police report.”In the interview, Mr. Packer described his recollection of law enforcement’s involvement.“They were saying, this is battery, we will go get him,” Mr. Packer said in the interview. “We’re prepared to get him right now. You can press charges. We can arrest him.”“Chris was being very dismissive of those options,” Mr. Packer continued. “He was like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ He was like, ‘No, no, no.’”Both on Sunday night and in subsequent interviews this week, the Los Angeles police have maintained that Mr. Smith’s slap qualified as misdemeanor battery under California law — and that as a misdemeanor, officers cannot take action unless the victim in the case files charges, which Mr. Rock did not do.In an interview on Thursday, Deputy Chief Blake Chow, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau, described the department’s role in less dramatic terms. At the Oscars, police officers are primarily responsible for patrolling outside the Dolby Theater and the Academy hires a security company to handle issues inside the building, he said.On Sunday, one police captain was stationed backstage as a liaison, the deputy chief said. The police captain inside did not observe the slap himself; but he quickly became aware of it, the deputy chief added. The police captain made contact with a representative for Mr. Rock shortly after the comedian had finished presenting an award and had returned backstage with his team, Deputy Chief Chow said.The representative communicated “Chris Rock’s wishes” that he did not want to press charges or file a police report, the deputy chief said. “He didn’t want to do anything.”The police department was not asked to escort Mr. Smith out of the venue, and even if the police had been asked to do that, such a request would not have fallen within the department’s purview, the deputy chief said.Detectives followed up on Monday with Mr. Rock’s representatives to ensure that he still did not want to take action. He reaffirmed that he did not, the deputy chief said.Mr. Rock made his first public comments about the incident on Wednesday at a comedy show in Boston. “I’m still kind of processing what happened,” Mr. Rock said, while promising to discuss the episode in greater depth later. “It’ll be serious, it’ll be funny, but I’d love to — I’m going to tell some jokes.”After nominating only white actors and actresses for its awards in 2015, drawing widespread criticism, the academy did it again the next year — overlooking performances like the one Mr. Smith gave in “Concussion.” At the time, Ms. Pinkett Smith was outspoken about what many people saw as an urgent need for the academy to become more inclusive. Smith was less pointed in his criticism, but joined her in a boycott of the ceremony, drawing attention to the #OscarsSoWhite movement.Nicole Sperling More

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      How Stephen Sondheim’s Work Did (and Didn’t) Translate to the Screen

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      A new series of adaptations, documentaries and more examines the different ways the composer-lyricist left his mark on movies.Stephen Sondheim, the unparalleled composer-lyricist who died in November, may have changed musical theater forever, but as a new program at the Museum of the Moving Image argues, he left his mark on film as well. Whether it’s Elaine Stritch’s screen-shattering performance of “The Ladies Who Lunch” in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary “Original Cast Album: ‘Company’” or Madonna’s slinking around and cooing “Sooner or Later” in “Dick Tracy,” Sondheim’s work has given film audiences memorable moments.The museum program, See It Big: Sondheim, assembled by the guest programmer Michael Koresky, the film curator Eric Hynes and the assistant curator, Edo Choi, offers a survey of adaptations of Sondheim’s work and other examples of his contributions to film, including a murder-mystery screenplay and the score to a French new wave film. I spoke with Koresky about Sondheim’s gifts to cinema and why it’s so hard to adapt his work. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Sondheim let people adapt his work freely, which your program shows.He said in many interviews that he is OK with someone massaging and changing and doing things for their own sake, and I think that just shows his generosity and his experimentation ability to allow others to be experimental. You can see that all the way through to 2021. With the Spielberg version of “West Side Story,” you could tell that he was sort of delighted to find that it had this new life.I think it’s up to us, as Sondheim lovers, to [say] when something isn’t working. But because of that, it takes something really different and experimental and strange to be a truly successful adaptation, which is why I think that “Original Cast Album: ‘Company’” is probably the best “adaptation” of a Sondheim musical.What about that film is able to articulate the skill and artistry of Sondheim in ways that some other attempts do not?Remembering Stephen SondheimThe revered and influential composer-lyricist died Nov. 26, 2021. He was 91. Obituary: A titan of the American musical, Sondheim was the driving force behind some of Broadway’s most beloved shows. Final Interview: Days before he died, he sat down with The Times for his final major interview. His Legacy: As a mentor, a letter writer and an audience regular, Sondheim nurtured generations of theater makers. ‘West Side Story’: Does the musical, which features some of the artist’s best-known lyrics, deserve a new hearing? ‘Company’: The revival of his 1970 musical features a gender swap.I think with Sondheim, witnessing the artistic process is part of the whole experience, creation is baked into the actual production. When you’re really attuned to the lyrics and the melodies, you’re thinking about how this possibly could have come about. So you’re constantly aware of the richness of the text and the complexity. For a documentary to just be about that literally: You’re seeing people do things over and over again, you’re getting a glimpse into an aspect of musical production that you probably never would have the chance to see. Pulling the strings and looking becomes part of the text. His musicals are so much about their own construction, so I can’t think of a better film based on Sondheim.Was there a particular piece that you wanted to start this series as a kind of guiding ethos for what you wanted the program to say about his legacy?For me, it was the 1966 television program “Evening Primrose,” which didn’t end up in the program, only because it was impossible to find. I grew to love “Take Me to the World,” which is a song I discovered in a piano book. That show typifies everything that I love about Sondheim: the melodies, the strange subject matter, the weird sources of adaptation, the really idiosyncratic, disturbing, bizarre and beautiful. I wanted that to be the discovery for people.We started with the 2021 “West Side Story” because we want to give people the chance to see it on the big screen, since so many people missed seeing it last December.What is it that makes it so difficult to adapt Sondheim to the screen? There aren’t, with very few exceptions, great screen interpretations of his work that aren’t filmed theater productions.He gives you something that you think you understand. Even with “Into the Woods” (the 2014 film), it’s like, “Oh, it’s a deconstruction of fairy tales.” But that’s really not enough to go on. There’s something really profound going on there about sadness and loneliness that is probably really hard to square with the genre trappings. They’re tricky because he’s always doing two things at once. And when you make a film, filmmakers often focus on the spectacle, not realizing that the spectacle has to be elided. That’s really hard to do in film.I was thinking today about which Sondheim works I wish there were movies of. I never want “Sunday in the Park With George” to be a movie, just by virtue of what it is, how it’s produced, what it’s about. What it’s doing feels so New York stage, it would be so strange.Could you talk about Sondheim and Madonna’s cinematic work in “Dick Tracy”?For me, as a little gay boy with his Madonna “I’m Breathless” cassette tape in 1990, it was the essential thing. Period. “Dick Tracy,” the gruff lantern-jawed masculine comic book detective, just does not interest me. But I remember those songs. It’s one of those things that’s a queering agent. “Dick Tracy” really feels like a hybrid of a lot of different sensibilities. I like the way that Sondheim and Madonna’s contributions help to negate the uber-masculinity of the text.And we have to talk about “The Last of Sheila” (1973), which he co-wrote with Anthony Perkins.That’s a tricky one. It’s interesting that they chose an intricate, whodunit murder mystery plot, because how else would you intelligently funnel this Sondheim complexity and idea of overlapping narratives, characters, themes into a genre film? I think that’s what makes it delightful. With Sondheim you see the gears working without it taking you out of the film. It’s a movie about game playing, in which you’re constantly being asked to size up the people involved. It’s very mechanical in a fun way.And in a nasty way that I love, too.One of the game cards in the film reads, “You are a homosexual.” And the way they talk about it is surprisingly casual and sort of progressive. There’s the idea that this is an accusation. But when it’s revealed, there’s a real casualness about it. It’s surprising for “closeted” — at the time — gay men to write.See It Big: Sondheim runs through May 1 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. For more information, go to movingimage.us. More

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      Oscars Producer Did Not Want Will Smith Physically Removed After Slap

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      Will Packer, the producer of the telecast, said that Smith had been asked to leave after slapping Chris Rock, and then there were discussions of having him physically removed.Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast that was thrown into upheaval after the actor Will Smith went onstage and slapped the comedian Chris Rock, said Friday that after Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the ceremony, he urged the Academy leadership not to “physically remove” him from the theater in the middle of the live broadcast.Mr. Packer said he had learned from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there were discussions of plans to “physically remove” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he said he immediately approached academy officials and told them that he believed Mr. Rock did not want to “make a bad situation worse.”“I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time,” Mr. Packer said. “Because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It has been explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave.”EXCLUSIVE: #Oscars producer Will Packer tells Good Morning America about the frenetic aftermath of actor Will Smith slapping host Chris Rock live on stage on Hollywood’s biggest night. https://t.co/AeoYcGkM32 pic.twitter.com/8z35t8TPFw— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 1, 2022
      Mr. Packer gave his first interview since Sunday’s broadcast to “Good Morning America” on ABC, the network which also broadcasts the Oscars. In the interview, Mr. Packer said that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling”“He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” he said of Mr. Rock.Mr. Packer said that, like many viewers at home, he had originally thought the slap might be part of an unplanned comedic bit, and that he was not entirely sure until he spoke with Mr. Rock back stage that Mr. Smith had actually hit the comedian.“I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali,” Mr. Packer recalled Mr. Rock telling him.Mr. Packer said that Mr. Smith reached out and apologized to him the morning after the Oscars. And he praised Mr. Rock for having kept his cool. “Chris was keeping his head when everyone else was losing theirs,” he said.The Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith, who the academy said refused to leave following the incident, apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the academy denounced his actions.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.“I’ve never felt so immediately devastated,” Mr. Packer said of the incident.Asked if, after hearing Mr. Smith’s acceptance speech, he wished that the actor had left the ceremony, Mr. Packer said that he did, noting that Mr. Smith had not used his remarks to express real contrition and apologize to Mr. Rock.“If he wasn’t going to give that speech which made it truly better, then yes, yes,” Mr. Packer said when asked if he wished Mr. Smith had left the ceremony. “Because now you don’t have the optics of somebody who committed this act, didn’t nail it in terms of a conciliatory acceptance speech in that moment, who then continued to be in the room.”Shortly after the ceremony ended Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement saying that the person who had been slapped had “declined to file a police report.”In the interview, Mr. Packer described his recollection of law enforcement’s involvement.“They were saying, you know, this is battery, was the word they use in that moment,” Mr. Packer said in the interview. “They said we will go get him; we are prepared. We’re prepared to get him right now. You can press charges. We can arrest him. They were laying out the options, and as they were talking, Chris was being very dismissive of those options. He was like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ He was like, ‘No, no, no.’”Both on Sunday night and in subsequent interviews this week, the Los Angeles police have maintained that Mr. Smith’s slap qualified as misdemeanor battery under California law — and that as a misdemeanor, officers cannot take action unless the victim in the case files charges, which Mr. Rock did not do.In an interview on Thursday, Deputy Chief Blake Chow, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau, described the department’s role in less dramatic terms. At the Oscars, police officers are primarily responsible for patrolling outside the Dolby Theater and the Academy hires a security company to handle issues inside the building, he said.On Sunday, one police captain was stationed backstage as a liaison, the deputy chief said. The police captain inside did not observe the slap himself; but he quickly became aware of it, the deputy chief added. The police captain made contact with a representative for Mr. Rock shortly after the comedian had finished presenting an award and had returned backstage with his team, Deputy Chief Chow said.The representative communicated “Chris Rock’s wishes” that he did not want to press charges or file a police report, the deputy chief said. “He didn’t want to do anything.”The police department was not asked to escort Mr. Smith out of the venue, and even if the police had been asked to do that, such a request would not have fallen within the department’s purview, the deputy chief said.Detectives followed up on Monday with Mr. Rock’s representatives to ensure that he still did not want to take action. He reaffirmed that he did not, the deputy chief said.Mr. Rock made his first public comments about the incident on Wednesday at a comedy show in Boston. “I’m still kind of processing what happened,” Mr. Rock said, while promising to discuss the episode in greater depth later. “It’ll be serious, it’ll be funny, but I’d love to — I’m going to tell some jokes.”The academy said Wednesday that it had initiated disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith “for violations of the academy’s standards of conduct, including inappropriate physical contact, abusive or threatening behavior, and compromising the integrity of the academy.” It said that Mr. Smith would be given a chance to respond and that at its next board meeting, on April 18, it “may take any disciplinary action, which may include suspension, expulsion or other sanctions.” More

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      ‘The Bubble’ Review: Swabs, Camera, Action

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      Judd Apatow’s new film is a comedy about actors trying to make a dinosaur movie during the pandemic that plays more like a documentary of actors trying to make a Covid comedy.“The safest place in the world right now is a film set,” an agent (Rob Delaney) tells his actress client Carol (Karen Gillan) to encourage her to join the quarantined production of “Cliff Beasts 6.” “The Bubble,” a new comedy from Judd Apatow, tells the story of how the stars of this apparently long-running dinosaur franchise spent their pandemic while doubling as a sort of documentary about how Apatow, who wrote the screenplay with Pam Brady, spent his.Carol, who skipped “Cliff Beasts 5” and stretched herself by playing a half-Israeli, half-Palestinian space-alien fighter, is being edged out as the series’ youth appeal by a TikTok sensation (Iris Apatow). Their fellow stars and bubble occupants include Keegan-Michael Key as an actor trying to build a lifestyle brand, Leslie Mann and David Duchovny as ex-spouses who can’t keep their hands off each other and Pedro Pascal as a drugged-out playboy with designs on a hotel employee (an underused Maria Bakalova, from the “Borat” sequel).Ask those real-life actors (and these characters) to work together under strict Covid protocols, and it would be hard not to get some laughs. Gillan’s escalating exasperation is especially funny.But elements that have the potential to become running gags — the prospect of forced re-isolation when a crew member tests positive, a rash not of Covid but of the flu, a mysterious security chief (Ross Lee) who uses violence to prevent escapes — either languish or are dropped, as if Apatow simply cut together what he felt were inspired improvisations without regard for flow (or the uncharacteristically cheap-looking visuals). And the Hollywood satire, with Fred Armisen as the Home Depot employee turned Sundance darling hired to direct “Cliff Beasts 6,” is not just safe. It’s airless.The BubbleRated R. Drugs, sex, violence — life on a film set. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Paul Herman, Mainstay of Gangster Movies, Is Dead at 76

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      Over a four-decade career, he was perhaps best known for his role on “The Sopranos.” But he also had dozens of film credits, including “Goodfellas” and “The Irishman.”Paul Herman, who put in appearances as wiseguys and schlemiels in movies like Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” and “Casino” and three seasons of “The Sopranos,” died on Tuesday, his 76th birthday.His manager, T Keaton-Woods, confirmed the death in a statement but did not specify the cause or say where Mr. Herman died.Over a four-decade career, Mr. Herman was perhaps best known for his role on “The Sopranos” as Peter Gaeta, known as Beansie, the owner of pizza parlors who gets in trouble with a mobster — his travails include being hit on the head with a pot of hot coffee — but who manages to re-establish himself.Mr. Herman also appeared for five seasons on another beloved HBO series, “Entourage,” as an accountant who pleads unsuccessfully with his celebrity client to be less of a wastrel.He frequently played unnamed characters in the roughly half-dozen films by Mr. Scorsese in which he appeared, but in the director’s most recent feature, “The Irishman,” he had a more notable part: Whispers DiTullio, who, like Beansie, is a businessman involved with the Mafia who angers the wrong people and comes to grief.Mr. Herman at an awards show in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2014.John Shearer/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Herman’s dozens of other film credits include such crime-themed movies as “The Cotton Club” (1984), “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), “Heat” (1995) and “American Hustle” (2013), a screwball comedy about political corruption for which he and other members of the cast shared a Screen Actors Guild Award.“The only one who ever gave me the chance to play a saint is Marty,” Mr. Herman told The New York Times in 1989, referring to his role as Philip the Apostle in Mr. Scorsese’s 1988 film, “The Last Temptation of Christ.”Paul Herman was born on March 29, 1946, in Brooklyn. His movie career got going with “Dear Mr. Wonderful,” a 1982 West German film about working-class life in Newark and New York City that featured Joe Pesci in his first starring role.From there, Mr. Herman made a specialty of using his haggard but trusting mug to play bit characters like a burglar (in Woody Allen’s “Radio Days”), a headwaiter (in another Allen film, “Bullets Over Broadway”) and a bartender (in Sondra Locke’s “Trading Favors”), along with a motley assortment of gangsters.Information on survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Herman had homes in New York and Santa Monica, Calif.Offscreen, he was known for being friendly and well connected. “If you visited NYC from LA, he was the entertainment director,” the actor Tony Danza said on Twitter after his death.The music executive Tommy Mottola posted an undated black-and-white photo on Instagram of Mr. Herman sitting at a restaurant between young versions of Robert De Niro and the actress and the director Penny Marshall, who died in 2018. Mr. Mottola said Mr. Herman had been on a “first name basis with every superstar actor and musician in the world.”Mr. Herman was a part owner of the now closed but once buzzy Upper West Side restaurant Columbus, where one evening in 1989, sitting beside Al Pacino, he told The Times that he served as the nightly “social director.” The restaurant’s patrons included Mr. Scorsese, Mr. Allen and Francis Ford Coppola — all friends who had cast him in their movies over the years.Those three men had very different directing styles, Mr. Herman told The Times in 1989.With Mr. Scorsese and Mr. Coppola, “you can give them your ideas on a scene,” he said. “But with Woody, well, you just don’t do that with him because he has ideas he’s working out. You really can’t say one style is better than another, though.” More