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      Streaming Companies Are Looking to Britain for Studios to Meet Demand

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      Netflix, Amazon Prime and other studios are snapping up soundstages in Britain and building more, drawn by an experienced labor pool and alluring tax incentives.LIVERPOOL, England — For two decades, the Littlewoods building in Liverpool, a long, low-slung and cavernous space built to house a betting and mail-order company in the 1930s, sat abandoned. No one wanted to take on this crumbling hulk looming on the outskirts of the city.Until Lynn Saunders. She is the driving force to make it the center of Liverpool’s first film and TV studio complex.“It’s a beast of a site,” said Ms. Saunders, the head of the Liverpool Film Office. It had been too intimidating for most prospective buyers. But amid a boom in TV and film production in Britain, Littlewoods Studios is now one of at least two dozen major plans to build or expand studio space across Britain.Streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video are racing to meet insatiable demand for content and have chosen Britain as their location to make it, countering the malaise of overall investment in the nation since it voted to leave the European Union. In 2021, a record 5.6 billion pounds ($7.4 billion) was spent on film and high-end TV productions in Britain, nearly 30 percent more than the previous high in 2019, according to the British Film Institute. More than 80 percent of that money was coming ashore from American studios or other foreign productions.Lynn Saunders, the head of the Liverpool Film Office, hopes that adding studios will keep productions in town and stimulate the local economy.Francesca Jones for The New York TimesAssured that there is no imminent end to the desire for binge-worthy shows and movies, studios, property developers and local authorities are rushing to build more production space. Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity company, and Hudson Pacific Properties, the owner of Sunset Studios, which include the former homes of Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, have said they will invest £700 million to build the first Sunset Studios facility outside Los Angeles, just north of London. With 21 soundstages, it will be larger than any of its Hollywood studios.“There is just such a massive need to produce content in markets that already have infrastructure,” said Victor Coleman, the chairman and chief executive of Hudson Pacific Properties. “And the infrastructure is not necessarily just the facilities but it’s also the talent both in front and behind the camera.”The once-abandoned Littlewoods building in Liverpool. The site is now one of about a dozen major plans to build or expand studio space across Britain.Francesca Jones for The New York TimesThe early “Star Wars” films and 10 years’ worth of Harry Potter movies helped Britain get here. Film productions were attracted by experienced labor and visual effects companies and, critically, generous tax breaks. In 2013, the incentives were extended to TV productions that cost more than £1 million per broadcast hour — so-called high-end TV series, like “The Crown” and “Game of Thrones.” In recent years, productions were offered a 25 percent cash rebate on qualifying expenditures, such as visual effects done in Britain. In the 2020-21 fiscal year, tax breaks for film, TV, video games, children’s television and animation exceeded £1.2 billion.In Britain, film gets a level of government attention that other creative industries, such as live theater, can only dream of.“I would not like to contemplate the loss of the tax incentive,” said Ben Roberts, the chief executive of the British Film Institute. Without it, Britain would become immediately uncompetitive, he added.Most of the growth in production in Britain comes from big-budget TV shows, a staple of streaming channels. Last year, 211 high-end TV productions filmed in Britain, such as “Ted Lasso” and “Good Omens,” and fewer than half of them were produced solely by British companies, according to the British Film Institute. Compared with 2019, the amount spent jumped by 85 percent to £4.1 billion.Buildings and streets in Liverpool were transformed into Gotham City for the filming of “The Batman.”Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.St. George’s Hall in Liverpool was used in “The Batman.”Francesca Jones for The New York TimesA scene shows Batman jumping off the Liver building, in front of its clock.Francesca Jones for The New York TimesLiverpool already claims to be the second-most-filmed-in city in Britain after London. For a few weeks in late 2020, its streets became Gotham City for “The Batman,” and for years shows, including “Peaky Blinders,” have been shot there. The local authority is courting more TV shows by building four smaller studios.Property developers announced the plan for Littlewoods Studios in early 2018, but the grand ambitions were pushed off course a few months later by a fire in the building. Not wanting to miss out on the rising demand, Ms. Saunders convinced the City Council to spend £3 million building two soundstages adjacent to the site. They opened in October.And then at the end of last year, £8 million in public funding was approved for remedial work on the Littlewoods building to create two more sound stages. Ms. Saunders hopes that adding studios will keep productions in town for longer — occupying hotel rooms, ordering from restaurants and employing local people. The film office has also started investing in productions — so far to the tune of £2 million in six TV shows.Britain is already the largest production location for Netflix outside the United States and Canada. While plenty is filmed on location — such as “Bridgerton,” in Bath, and “Sex Education,” in Wales — Netflix committed to a permanent home in 2019 at the Pinewood Group’s Shepperton Studios in Surrey, just southwest of London, where “Dr. Strangelove” and “Oliver!” were made decades ago. Shepperton is now expanding, aiming to double the number of its soundstages to 31 by 2023, and Netflix plans to occupy much of that new space.“Ted Lasso” was one of 211 high-end TV productions filmed in Britain last year.Colin Hutton/Apple TV+, via Associated PressBut the descent of American streamers on British shores has brought its challenges, too. The industry is rife with stories of production crews leaving jobs for higher-paying gigs, long waits for studios and production costs that outpace inflation.Anna Mallett, Netflix’s vice president of physical production for the U.K., Europe, Middle East and Africa, resists the idea that the streamer’s voracious expansion is squeezing others out of studio space.“I do think there is enough for everyone,” she said. “There’s over six million square feet of production space coming onto the market in the next couple of years.”Amazon plans to move in next door. Last month, Prime Video agreed to lease 450,000 square feet in the new development at Shepperton Studios, including nine soundstages. The streaming service sent a ripple of excitement through Britain last year when it announced that it would film the second season of its “Lord of the Rings” series, “The Rings of Power,” in the country. It will move from New Zealand to the dismay of that country’s officials, who over two decades have offered hundreds of millions of dollars in financial incentives to the franchise.By 2023, Warner Bros. hopes to be underway with its plans to add 50 percent more soundstage space to its studios northwest of London.Warner Bros. was the first major Hollywood studio to set up a permanent location in Britain when it bought in 2010 the Leavesden studios, where it made Harry Potter.“It was a pretty huge leap for Warners to make that investment,” said Emily Stillman, the head of studio operations at Leavesden. After years of piecemeal expansion, the new development, if it gets planning approval, will be the studio’s biggest investment at the site.Away from more renowned studios surrounding London, there is hope that the production boom can bring job opportunities and investment to overlooked areas in Britain. New studios are being constructed out of an old industrial space in Dagenham, in east London, an area once synonymous with the manufacture of Ford cars in the 20th century. In Bristol, the local authority is investing £12 million to add three more soundstages to Bottle Yard Studios in an area that is economically struggling, said Laura Aviles, the head of the Bristol Film Office.A guide leading a tour of filiming areas in Liverpool, which are rapidly expanding as the industry invests in Britain.Francesca Jones for The New York Times“It’s been a struggle” to regenerate the area, she said, “and there are a lot of young people there who could be third-generation unemployed who have struggled to get into work.” The expansion will hopefully entice other businesses to the area.There is a risk that all this demand for studio space could become a blessing and a curse. Despite the skilled work force in the field, there are real concerns about whether Britain can train enough production crew and fill the associated roles to populate all this new studio space. The industry has committed millions of pounds to rapid training programs. Industry leaders hope to bring more people into the field and break the stereotype that the work — most of it freelance — is exclusively for the well off and well connected. This month, Prime Video said it would spend £10 million to fund courses in Britain focused on increasing diversity in the industry and positions in Prime Video-commissioned productions.And there is the fear that smaller independent productions by British filmmakers, who can’t as readily use debt to finance an expansion, will be left behind in this boom. Just 16 percent of the money spent on high-end TV shows in Britain last year went to solely domestic productions.The level of foreign investment “does run the risk of challenging the indigenous, independent sector in terms of its ability to retain talent, crew up, get finance, hire space, use locations,” Mr. Roberts of the British Film Institute said. “We are really alert to that not feeling like a squeeze too far.” More

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      Taylor Tomlinson: A Comic With the Confidence of a Star

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      On her new Netflix special, “Look at You,” she demonstrates tight joke writing, carefully honed act-outs and a ruthless appetite for laughs.The moment I knew that the stand-up comic Taylor Tomlinson was going to be a star was not after she made the precociously funny debut special, “Quarter-Life Crisis,” at the age of 25. Or her assured follow-up, “Look at You,” which premiered on Netflix this week. Or even after the news that she’s writing and starring in a movie about her own life (directed by Paul Weitz).It was the minute after the comic Whitney Cummings insulted her bangs.This took place on Cummings’s podcast, one of two freewheeling episodes that Tomlinson, now 28, appeared on during the pandemic that were also filmed and released on YouTube. For most of their chummy conversations, Tomlinson appeared polite, deferential, even in awe of her friend and mentor, a more seasoned stand-up, writer and television star. But when Cummings offhandedly suggested her protégé might need help from a stylist with her new haircut, the temperature in the room plummeted.“Are you serious?” Tomlinson asked, shooting a look that jarred the voluble Cummings into juddering paralysis. Tomlinson diagnosed the insult as a disingenuous play for content and calmly told Cummings to stop. Then came the counterpunch. Shifting from her friend to the camera, she told a story of pitching a television show with Cummings that described her, brutally, as an underminer. Tomlinson wrapped up this entertaining story with a compliment, saying she learned how to stand up to Cummings from Cummings. Along with teaching a lesson that it’s always best to tread carefully when commenting on a new hairstyle, Tomlinson displayed steel, poise, showmanship and a willingness to get tensely uncomfortable, which can help turn a good joke into a great one. More than anything, she showed a commanding ability to quickly pivot without fluster. Small talk can reveal big things.The bangs were gone by the time Tomlinson shot “Look at You,” but it did not escape my notice that after an arty opening shot of her all alone in the audience, she began her set with jokes about them. “It’s been a rough couple years,” she said, setting up expectations of talk about the pandemic. “I got bangs at one point.”This new hour has the confidence to start slowly but build, anchored by three or four superb extended bits. Tomlinson has emerged as one of the youngest comics with multiple Netflix hours because of tight joke writing, carefully honed act-outs and a ruthless appetite for laughs. With a quick smile and wide, alert eyes, her comic persona leans into a wholesome, cheerful affect, a Christian upbringing and impeccably basic cultural references (Harry Potter, Taylor Swift). This provides a solid backdrop for incongruously dark swivels, sometimes accompanied by the kind of shimmies Steph Curry does after hitting a shot near half court.Her gift is making weighty subjects come off as breezy. There’s no way a special that covers night terrors, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, a dead mother and a disturbingly blunt father, along with suicidal thoughts, should seem this delightful. That requires skill and savvy. Take her six-minute chunk on her mother dying young. These jokes are carefully massaged, contextualized and accented to work for any crowd, and among her strategies to lighten the mood is arguing that it’s OK to laugh because the death of her mother helped her career.“Do you think I’d be this successful at my age if I had a live mom?” she asks, flashing the kind of condescending disappointment given to someone ordering lobster at a diner. “She’s in heaven. I’m on Netflix. It all worked out.”Tomlinson has a people pleaser’s ability to ingratiate. In her new special, she says she looks like someone who would be better at meeting your mother than at sex. “I’ll meet your mom all night long,” she boasts. But to get a laugh, she’s just as happy to play the jerk. “Lot of my friends are settling down,” she says. “Some are just settling.”Tomlinson taped her first special after a breakup with her fiancé. Since then, she has clearly spent many hours with a therapist, which makes its way into many jokes. Ever since Maria Bamford dug into the subject of mental health, it has been explored thoroughly in stand-up, particularly in the last year or two, and we may be reaching the point of exhaustion. And Tomlinson occasionally risks veering into a kind of comedy that doesn’t fully digest and transform therapy into jokes.And yet, the strength of her best bits is the specificity and depth of her analysis of her own psychology. There are few jokes with the classical structure breaking down the difference between men and women, but more investigation into her own eccentric personality. She attributes her tendency to rush into relationships as a reaction to her mother’s dying so early in her life, and builds many jokes out of her trust issues, including a wonderfully performed series of punch lines about how she interprets any kindness from a boyfriend as a tactic. “Oh, is this your move?” is her refrain, about everything from opening the car door to staying together for six decades.Her first special was a portrait of a young fogy, but this new one zeros in on her self-protective cynicism and exaggerates it until it’s an absurd cartoon. The funniest parts of these jokes are in the subtext, how Tomlinson performs knowingness in a way that can be truly clueless. But unlike many comics who find laughs in saying the wrong thing, her act never comes off as character comedy. It’s a testament to her acting ability that even when you know she’s presenting a deluded version of herself, you buy it.For a comic her age, Tomlinson is remarkably nimble, able to pivot from light to dark, innocent to dirty, chummy to aggressive. Whatever gets the laugh. If there is something missing from her comic tool kit, it might be a certain vulnerability. She can push right past that, and understandably so. She’s dealing with grave issues, like a parent’s death or a wounding comment, and her emotional armor needs to be thick. Notably, she allows it to get a little thinner when it comes to more modest concerns like, well, her bangs. It’s in that bit that she sits in insecurity.“Having bangs is exactly like being on mushrooms,” she says. “The whole time you’re like: Do I look weird?” More

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      ‘Lupin,’ Netflix’s French Heist Drama, Is the Victim of a Theft

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      Equipment valued at more than $300,000 was stolen from the set of the hit series during filming in a Paris suburb last week.“Lupin,” the hit French heist drama, was itself at the center of a heist last week when about 20 young men wearing balaclavas stole equipment valued at more than $300,000 from the set during filming in a Paris suburb, a Netflix spokeswoman said.The theft, which was reported by the international news service Agence France-Presse and the French newspaper Le Parisien, came just over a week after more than 200 antique props valued at more than $200,000 were stolen from vehicles during the filming of the fifth season of “The Crown” in England, according to the South Yorkshire Police and Netflix.Netflix said in a statement on Thursday that there was an “incident” during the filming of the third season of “Lupin” on Feb. 25.“Our cast and crew are safe and there were no injuries,” the statement said. “We have now resumed filming.”A Netflix spokeswoman said that equipment and other items worth about 300,000 euros, or $332,000, were stolen by men who showed up on the set and “attacked” with fireworks. Filming was paused for an afternoon, and the local police were investigating, she said.“Lupin” became a global phenomenon upon its release in January 2021 and is among Netflix’s most streamed non-English-language original shows. Omar Sy plays Assane Diop, a debonair Parisian and the son of a Senegalese immigrant who idolizes Arsène Lupin, the “gentleman thief” and main character in a collection of stories by the French writer Maurice Leblanc starting in 1905.A spokesman for the police in Nanterre, the suburb outside Paris where the filming was taking place, said he could not comment on the case.In an earlier statement about the theft from “The Crown,” Netflix said that it hoped the items stolen from the set in Doncaster, in northern England, would be found and returned. The stolen items included a replica of a Fabergé egg, several sets of silver and gold candelabra, the face of a William IV grandfather clock, a 10-piece silver dressing-table set and crystal glassware, according to a report in the Antiques Trade Gazette.“The items stolen are not necessarily in the best condition and therefore of limited value for resale,” Alison Harvey, the set decorator for the fifth season of “The Crown,” told the Antiques Trade Gazette. “However, they are valuable as pieces to the U.K. film industry.”The South Yorkshire police said they had received a report of a theft in the late afternoon on Feb. 16. Three vehicles containing props had been “broken into” and “a number of items” were taken, they said. “Officers investigated the incident but all existing lines of inquiry have now been exhausted,” the police said in a brief statement.Matt Stevens More

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      Watch These 13 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in March

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      It’s awards season, and a bunch of great Oscar-winning and -nominated films are leaving this month. Check them out while you can.The Academy Awards arrive at the end of March, and the titles leaving Netflix in the United States this month are steeped in Oscar glory, including multiple nominees and winners for best picture, actor, actress and more. They also include hit comedies, erotic thrillers and family favorites. Queue up these 13 movies before they’re gone. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘Howards End’ (March 15)This 1992 adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, and is a quintessential example of the “Merchant-Ivory film”: a period literary adaptation of impeccable design and intelligent craft. But Merchant-Ivory productions were too often inaccurately dismissed as airless, stuffy, overly intellectual affairs; “Howards End” is a robust, energetic picture, rife with familial betrayal, long-simmering attractions and class resentment. Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Helena Bonham-Carter are all excellent, but the standout is Emma Thompson, who won her first Oscar for her searing work as the protagonist Margaret Schlegel.Stream it here.‘Philomena’ (March 21)The British comic actor Steve Coogan — best known for his long-running turns as Alan Partridge and as a fictionalized version of himself in the “Trip” movies and BBC series — did a surprising shift to the serious when he co-wrote and co-starred in Stephen Frears’s adaptation of the nonfiction book “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.” Judi Dench received an Oscar nomination for best actress for her heart-wrenching performance as the title character, an Irishwoman who sought out the son she was forced to give up for adoption a half-century earlier. Coogan (nominated for best screenplay) is the journalist who assists her and uncovers a horrifying story of religious hypocrisy.Stream it here.‘Lawless’ (March 27)The director John Hillcoat and the musician and screenwriter Nick Cave, who first collaborated on the unforgettable outback Western “The Proposition,” re-teamed for this story of bootlegging brothers in Depression Era Virginia. The cast is jaw-dropping: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Noah Taylor and Mia Wasikowska all get a chance to shine, and if nothing else, “Lawless” is a priceless opportunity to watch some of our finest thespians rub elbows. But it’s thoughtful and entertaining besides; its Australian auteurs might seem an odd fit for such an inherently American tale, but their outsider perspective keeps them from overly romanticizing this criminal family’s “entrepreneurial” exploits.Stream it here.‘Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom’ (March 28)The “Wire” star Idris Elba is in top form in this handsome biopic of Nelson Mandela, tracking his journey from childhood in Apartheid-era South Africa through his protest, imprisonment, release and triumphant election as the nation’s first democratically elected president. The film is plagued by the issues of brevity so common to the biopic form, but the electrifying performances of Elba and Naomie Harris as Mandela’s wife, Winnie, give the picture its forward momentum and a sense of urgency.Stream it here.‘Blood Diamond’ (March 31)Leonardo DiCaprio snagged his third Academy Award nomination for his quicksilver turn as Danny Archer, a morally slippery smuggler and mercenary. Archer will do just about anything for a payday, so his initial presence in Sierra Leone circa 1999 is purely financial, but the more he learns about the struggles of civilians and the barbarism of loyalists, the less he can shrug off what he sees as the price of doing business. The director Edward Zwick is particularly proficient at personalizing stories of political and historical conflict (his earlier films include “Glory,” “The Siege” and “The Last Samurai”), and he is, as ever, a fine actor’s director, stewarding solid work from not only DiCaprio but also his co-star Djimon Hounsou, an Oscar nominee for best supporting actor.Stream it here.‘Bright Star’ (March 31)Jane Campion is heavily favored to win this year’s Oscar for best director for her stunning navigation of “The Power of the Dog.” Her masterful direction is rendered even more impressive by her long absence from the big screen; “Dog” was her first feature film since this fact-based romance, released in 2009. She tells the story of the poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his late-in-life romance with his muse, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Other filmmakers might have focused on Keats and viewed Brawne as a mere passing fancy. But as she has throughout her career, Campion is fascinated by the emotional push-pull of romantic entanglements and the unexpected ways women find their power in these encounters.Stream it here.‘Gremlins’ (March 31)The rules have become part of pop culture consciousness: Don’t give them water; keep them way from bright light; and whatever you do, never, ever feed them after midnight. Of course, rules are made to be broken, and one of the purest pleasures of Joe Dante’s giddily entertaining 1984 smash is his winking acknowledgment that we’re waiting for all hell to break loose. Dante’s gift for barely-controlled chaos gives just enough discipline to Chris Columbus’s witty screenplay, while its cheerful disemboweling of twinkly, small-town values feels particularly subversive for a Reagan-era movie.Stream it here.‘I Love You, Man’ (March 31)The best Judd Apatow comedy that Apatow had nothing to do with, this shaggily charming 2009 comedy finds newly engaged (and likably uptight) Paul Rudd seeking out an adult male pal for the first time, and finding himself pulled into the orbit of goofy man-child Jason Segel. The writer and director John Hamburg (“Along Came Polly”) never quite builds up much in the way of stakes, but it’s such a pleasure to watch his stars play — as well as such welcome supporting players as Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, J.K. Simmons and Jane Curtin – that you likely won’t mind.Stream it here.‘Interview With the Vampire’ (March 31)Anne Rice’s best-selling, long-running “Vampire Chronicles” finally made it to the silver screen in 1994, with Tom Cruise in the leading role of the vampire Lestat, a role whose sexual fluidity and camp theatricality seemed to many (including Rice herself) out of the actor’s reach. Yet Cruise acquits himself nicely, conveying the character’s charisma and menace, while Brad Pitt captures the hopelessness of the narrator, Louis. But the show stealer is Kirsten Dunst in a haunting performance as Claudia, a vampire who is “turned” as a child and remains locked at that age. The director Neil Jordan beautifully mixes the story’s Gothic horror and dark comedy elements, ladling on the Bayou atmosphere for extra spice.Stream it here.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘The Crown’ Jewels, and Other Props, Reported Stolen Amid Filming

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      More than 200 props valued at roughly $200,000, including antiques, a replica of a Fabergé egg, silver and gold candelabra and part of a grandfather clock, were reportedly stolen.It was not quite a royal heist.More than 200 antique props used during the filming of the fifth season of “The Crown” were stolen from vehicles last week in Doncaster, in northern England, according to the South Yorkshire Police and Netflix.The props are collectively valued at roughly $200,000, and include a replica of a Fabergé egg, several sets of silver and gold candelabra, a clock face of a William IV grandfather clock, a 10-piece silver dressing table set and crystal glassware and decanters, according to a report in the Antiques Trade Gazette.“The items stolen are not necessarily in the best condition and therefore of limited value for resale,” Alison Harvey, the series set decorator for the fifth season of “The Crown,” told the publication. “However, they are valuable as pieces to the U.K. film industry.”In a statement, Netflix, which streams the hit drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, confirmed that the antiques had been stolen and expressed hope that they would be found and returned.“Replacements will be sourced,” the company said, adding that “there is no expectation that filming will be held up.”The South Yorkshire Police said that they had received a report of a theft in the late afternoon on Feb. 16. Three vehicles containing props had been “broken into” and “a number of items” were taken, the authorities said.“Officers investigated the incident but all existing lines of inquiry have now been exhausted,” the police said in a brief statement.“The Crown” completed its fourth season in the fall of 2020 and won the prize for best drama at the 73rd Emmy Awards in 2021. Netflix has said the show will run a total of six seasons. It regularly recasts the roles of the central royals, and Netflix has said Imelda Staunton will play Queen Elizabeth II, Jonathan Pryce will play Prince Philip and Lesley Manville will play Princess Margaret in the coming seasons. More

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      Kanye West Always Wanted You to Watch

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      The three-part Netflix documentary “Jeen-yuhs” shows the superstar in his earliest days, then time warps to the present, with disorienting results.No one could quite understand why the young producer was being followed by a cameraman. Almost everywhere Kanye West went beginning in the early 2000s — before “Through the Wire,” before “The College Dropout,” before anything, really — he was trailed by Clarence Simmons, known as Coodie, a comedian and public-access TV host from Chicago who had decided to document West’s attempts to become a successful musician.In “Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” the three-part Netflix documentary that draws heavily on that footage, the camera serves two functions: It captures West at a vulnerable moment in his nascent career, when the future was anything but guaranteed. And it is also a kind of marker of success on its own. The camera’s presence forces the people West encounters to treat him just a tad more seriously, or at least to wonder if they should. In almost every encounter captured, there is a slight hiccup at the beginning, in which the other person wonders, what exactly are we doing here?West, one of the defining figures of the last 20 years, has been a consistent innovator in music and style. But he has also long had a preternatural grasp of the mechanisms of celebrity, how success is only truly impactful if it is imprinted onto others. West believed in himself, but wouldn’t stop until he’d convinced those around him, too.“Jeen-yuhs” is something like the demo tape of that phenomenon. It is both fascinating and obvious, eerie in the way that it foretells who West eventually would become by showing who he always has been.West, as we understand him now, is in early bloom during the first two of the docuseries’s three parts. Driving down lower Broadway in Manhattan, he tells a journalist sitting in the back seat how he feels when others tell him he’s thriving: “I might be living your American dream but I’m nowhere near where my dream is, dog. I got aspirations.” At one point, he says, “I’m trying to get to the point where I can drop the last name off my name.” (Indeed, he is now known solely as Ye.)Granting Simmons access was a combination of marketing savvy and also deep ego — “A little narcissistic or whatever,” West says. Nowadays, most pop superstars (and nowhere-near stars) are documented constantly for social media, but West understood the value of that labor early.The result is a prehistory of one of the most transfixing and agonizing celebrities of the 21st century. The footage could explain to aliens what creativity on Earth looks like. We see West recovering from his 2002 car crash, going through several dental procedures, and then getting back to work and emerging with “Through the Wire,” his debut single, which would finally catapult him toward the stratosphere. The camera captures a vivid, undimmable mind at constant, stubborn work.He asks to save the wires that held his jaw together, still bloody, for his mother, Donda. She appears throughout the film, often as a corrective force; even as West becomes more famous, he is never something other than his mother’s son. She doesn’t flinch from the lens, perhaps because the camera’s eye and that of a loving, knowing parent aren’t all that different.West also encourages the new people he meets to live out their relationship to him on camera. When he plays Pharrell Williams “Through the Wire,” Williams becomes a willing actor, walking out of the room and down the hall, overcome with thrill. After a recording session with Jay-Z in which West talks his way onto a song, Simmons prompts Jay-Z for a quote, asking him to literalize his co-sign of West for the camera.Not everyone plays along with West’s schemes. It’s odd to watch Scarface, one of rap music’s great philosophers, effectively pass on “Jesus Walks,” maybe the most meaningful and popular spiritual hip-hop song of all time. He also chides West for leaving his orthodontic retainers out on the countertop, a light spank from elder to child. (The retainers appear on several occasions, a symbolic embodiment of West’s still unformed persona.)There is, perhaps surprisingly, ample footage like this — this was an era in which West was almost always the less successful person in any interaction. Note the hangdog way in which he skulks out of the Roc-A-Fella Records office after going door to door and playing music for various executives, who seem to regard him as a lovable nuisance. Given how West moves through the world now, it’s disorienting to see him, time and again, as a supplicant.This is footage that most hagiographers would omit, but Simmons and his directing partner Chike Ozah — professionally, they’re known as Coodie & Chike — understand their subject differently. Simmons was inspired, he says in the film, by the Chicago basketball documentary “Hoop Dreams,” a film that cuts its melancholy with bolts of hope.And much about West in the early 2000s, before Roc-A-Fella Records relented and signed him as a recording artist (rather than just a producer), is lightly tragic. When West is at an industry event with far more famous people, in search of a little validation, Simmons films him from a distance, emphasizing his relative smallness. But even this footage doesn’t feel directed so much as captured, tiny moments that in the rear view appear huge.Cameras are not neutral — they change their subject. But while everyone lies for the camera, some people live in the camera. Throughout the film, West often appears most mindful of how history might regard him, driven by a sense that in a room full of people, the most important connection he could make was with Simmons’s lens. (See the scene in which he and Mos Def rap “Two Words,” and West appears to be staring through the camera’s aperture somewhere into the future.)Simmons offers largely space-filling voice-over throughout the film, not an unreliable narrator so much as an uncertain one. There is either far too much or not nearly enough of him, more likely the former: The segments where he links West’s story to his own feel particularly ill-placed, a distraction that doesn’t offer context on the main subject. And some narrative choices are contrived: Too much time is given over to West’s desire to be featured in an MTV News segment spotlighting new artists. (It so happens that MTV was where Simmons and Ozah met.)The success that Simmons had hoped to capture ended up being his termination notice — once West’s career was finally operating under its own steam, he left Simmons (and his footage) behind. That alone would have made for a compelling film. But the third segment, which is far more scattershot, consists largely of scraps that Simmons accrues over the next couple of decades, an era in which West becomes something unfamiliar to him: a world-building superstar.This episode is less narratively satisfying and coherent than the first two, but Simmons’s indiscriminate eye and his pre-existing comfort with West end up as assets. Where in the early 2000s, Simmons had an aspirant as his subject, now he has someone who exists between superhero and autocrat, a figure who isn’t performing simply for one camera but for a world of cameras and observers.There is a grim scene in which West is speaking with potential real estate partners, a gaggle of older white men, and tells them, “I took bipolar medication last night to have a normal conversation and turn alien to English.” He likens his treatment by the public to being drawn and quartered.Simmons lingers for a while — this is who his subject has become, and it is as important to see as any of the clips from when he was simply an up-and-comer. But real as it is, this isn’t the West that Simmons knows, or can stomach. There’s something itchy in the camerawork, and eventually Simmons does something that doesn’t seem to come naturally: He turns the camera off. More

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      Jean-Pierre Jeunet on “Amélie” and “Bigbug”

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      The French director is candid about his fights with Harvey Weinstein and his reasons for working with Netflix. And he can’t hide his joy about a rerelease of “Amélie.”The French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a conjurer of whimsical visions for the big screen, like his most beloved work, “Amélie.” But for his first movie in nearly a decade, “Bigbug,” out Friday, he chose to work with Netflix.This retro-futuristic comedy, which debuted Friday, is set in 2045, when artificial intelligence facilitates most quotidian tasks but also threatens mankind. Featuring Jeunet’s signature irreverence and colorful mise en scène, “Bigbug” follows an ensemble cast of offbeat characters and their domestic robots, confined to a technologically advanced home by the malevolent androids that now rule the world. Together they must find a way out.Jeunet considers it a cynical entry in an oeuvre that includes “Delicatessen” (1991), about a murderous landlord and his tenants in a postapocalyptic reality, and “The City of Lost Children” (1995), a steampunk fantasy centering on a mad scientist who steals children’s dreams.Speaking shortly before the recent Oscar nominations, the director, 68, said that two decades later it still pains him that “Amélie” didn’t win any of the five Academy Awards it was up for in 2002.He said he believed the academy shut out his film over the producer Harvey Weinstein’s awards campaign tactics. “It was a punishment, not for me but for him,” he said. “But this was our year! That is a trophy I would have liked to have.”Jeunet was speaking from his home in Paris. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Claude Perron in a scene from the retro-futuristic “BigBug.”NetflixWere you thinking about the dystopias of your earlier films, like “The City of Lost Children” and “Delicatessen,” when you were writing “Bigbug”?I used to say this was “Delicatessen 2.0.” No, the concept was to make a cheap movie, because all my films are very expensive and I was looking for something with a single set, like “Delicatessen.” It was a concept to write a story with people stuck in a room and it was created before Covid, which is funny. We wrote this story during the shooting of “The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet” [about a boy genius on a cross-country journey]. I’m sure you don’t know about it.I actually have seen it.Oh, you saw it! Cool, because Harvey Weinstein did everything he could to kill that movie. [Laughs] Have you seen it in 3-D?Yes, it played in a couple theaters in 3-D in 2015. I remember it took a long time to be released in the U.S.I know, because he didn’t care. I refused to modify the film. Of course he wanted to re-edit, but now it’s fun to imagine him in jail. [Laughs]Can you elaborate on what happened with Harvey Weinstein on that film?He told me, “We will do something better than with ‘Amélie.’ I promise.” But when after some test screenings he was like a gallery owner saying to the painter, “We’re going to modify the green because in U.S. we don’t like green. I will ask the framer to put some blue instead.” I refused. I said, “I won’t change one frame.” So he punished me like he punished everybody. He wanted to do that with “Amélie” as well, but he couldn’t because it was such a success. He never touched a thing.Your films often feature mechanical gadgets. “Bigbug” has a lot of robots that were physically built.I love to imagine these objects because I get to keep them. I don’t know if it’ll be possible with Netflix. I hope so. Two years ago, a beautiful exhibition of props from our movies in Paris and in Lyon had 180,000 admissions. I was waiting for money for “Bigbug” and nobody wanted to produce it. But yes, it was such a pleasure to imagine the robots, especially Einstein [a mechanical bust resembling the physicist]. He had 82 motors inside to move.Thinking of how “Bigbug” presents technology, are you afraid of the future or what the future may hold for humanity?I am just curious, because I am not young and I would like to live to see what will be the next gadget, the next iPhone, the next GPS. Maybe there will be more drama, maybe nothing. Maybe the earth will disappear like in “Don’t Look Up.” I’m curious more than afraid. If I had kids, maybe I would be more scared about the future.What do you believe it says about the future of our flawed species?I hate messages. But if there is a message in “Bigbug” it is that artificial intelligence will never kill human beings because they will stay stupid. They don’t have a soul. They try to have a sense of humor, but they don’t understand anything. [Laughs]Jeunet working with François Levantal during production of “BigBug.”Bruno Calvo/NetflixWhy do you think it was difficult to find the funds to produce “Bigbug”?Because in France, when you have something original you’re [expletive]. It was the case with “Delicatessen.” The same for “Amélie.” It was too weird, too quirky, as you say in English. With Netflix it was kind of a dream. They wrote me and said, “Do you have something?” And I said, “Yes, I have a film, but in France nobody likes it. You won’t like it.” [Laughs] They told me, “Send it.” Twenty-four hours later it was greenlighted!Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      The Kanye West Documentary 'Jeen-yuhs' Finally Hits Netflix

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      The new three-part film “Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy” has been in the works since the early 2000s. In an interview, the directing duo Coodie & Chike discuss its long journey to Netflix.“Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” Netflix’s three-part documentary about the rise of Kanye West, does not dwell, or seek to correct the record, on the most well-known of the rapper’s celebrity blowups. George W. Bush, Taylor Swift, Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian hardly factor. There has never been a shortage of West analyzing his own travails, after all.Instead, relying on casual footage chronicling the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of West’s 2004 debut album, “The College Dropout,” the four-hour-plus film lingers on quieter, pre-fame moments: chats with his mother, Donda, about the difference between confidence and arrogance; the desperation of trying to play his demo CD for disinterested peers; a more respected artist being disgusted by West’s orthodontics retainer.Behind the camera throughout was Clarence Simmons, a stand-up comedian-turned-director known as Coodie, who along with his creative partner, Chike Ozah, has been compiling video of West for more than 20 years. But that wasn’t always the plan.Originally conceived as a “Hoop Dreams”-style feature, the documentary was supposed to end in the early 2000s, with West — who is now legally known by his old nickname, Ye — winning his first Grammy Award. But as West developed from a nerdy Chicago beatmaker for Jay-Z to a polarizing, era-defining artist across music, fashion and more, he grew apart from Coodie, an old neighborhood friend, and changed his mind about the project, leaving hundreds of hours of tape in limbo.Following some false starts and brief reconciliations, the directing duo Coodie & Chike, as they are credited, finally found traction — and more time with West — in recent years, amid another uptick in controversy. West’s mental health struggles, disastrous 2020 presidential run and recent album named for his late mother all get some airtime in the third episode.Yet the core of “Jeen-Yuhs” remains the vérité depiction of West’s chrysalis years, with Coodie filling in the gaps in time by telling his own story of personal metamorphosis and creative ambition. “This is not the definitive story of Kanye West, this is the story told through the most unique perspective,” said Ian Orefice, the president of Time Studios, which co-produced the project.Ahead of its first-episode premiere on Wednesday, Coodie and Chike discussed the long-gestating documentary, the ups and downs of living alongside mega-fame and West’s last-minute demands for final cut of the film. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Chike Ozah, left, and Clarence Simmons, known as Coodie, collected early footage of West’s rise — and then had to wait.Rafael Rios for The New York TimesThe film begins with the premise that you always knew Kanye would make it big. What first convinced you that he was going to be a star?COODIE It started with his production. But then I would just keep running into Kanye, and I remember he was performing with his group, the Go Getters. He just commanded the stage. I was like, “This is the dude! The producer — he’s the one.” Then I saw how he loved the camera. He was loving the camera. He wanted to rap for anybody, and it was just like he was performing for a thousand people, but it’s just one person and he’s rapping to them.What was Kanye’s original reason for not putting a film out back then? In the footage, he’s so excited to tell people you’re making a documentary.COODIE He said, “Man, I don’t want nobody to see my real self.” He said, “I’m acting right now.” It was too intimate. But I feel like the reason why he was loving me filming him at the beginning was just because I was that dude, really. I was popular in Chicago — cool, funny.CHIKE You brought value to his brand in Chicago instantly, just by deciding to have him on Channel Zero [Coodie’s original hip-hop show on public access television].COODIE The greatest ambition was for him to win a Grammy, and I wanted to follow him to see it. But it’s definitely, definitely a blessing that it didn’t come out, because I didn’t know what I was doing at all.What was it like to watch the rest of his rise from more of a distance?COODIE I was so proud ​​to see him accomplishing all the things he was accomplishing. But then I felt left out, too. Like when he went to Oprah, I’m like, “I want to meet Oprah!”CHIKE It’s not all peachy and clean. I think that’s the case with anybody that’s on the rise to stardom like this. Coodie and I definitely felt what it’s like when outsiders come in and start jockeying for position. We had that Bryan Barber and Outkast vibe for a minute — like we’ll rise together and do all these music videos. But as he got bigger, more people started coming into the fold and you just get pushed out. Luckily, Coodie and I had a relationship and a bond together and we were able to find creativity elsewhere.At that point, did you believe the project to be dead or did you always assume you would return to it eventually?COODIE I felt like we would come back to it someday. I used to look at all the mini-DVs, and the bigger he got, I knew how much more valuable my footage would be: One day in God’s time, this is going to happen.He sat us at the table at Kris Jenner’s house, right before “Pablo” [the “Life of Pablo” album in 2016], he was like, “Man, you know, I get misunderstood a lot.” He asked us to be his voice. We thought it was time for the documentary to come out, for people to see the real Kanye. He was working with Scooter Braun at the time and we were at HBO with it. Then all of a sudden, they had other plans for Kanye. We were right there and it just went to nothing.It felt, to me, that Kanye was crying out for help at that moment. Right after, he went on the Saint Pablo tour and that’s when he had the breakdown — he calls it the “breakthrough.” I was really, really worried. I thought we were supposed to help him and we weren’t able to because of the powers around him. Not only did I feel worried, I was extremely mad about it.“I did ask Kanye, ‘Did you watch the film?’” Coodie said. “And he said that’s not his process.”NetflixOn a practical level, how did you keep all those tapes safe?COODIE I really didn’t even. You’d just see it in a duffle bag, shoe boxes.CHIKE But it’s like bricks of gold in there.COODIE It’s in storage now, though!When did you know that you finally had his full buy-in?COODIE When I showed him the sizzle. He called me out of nowhere and said he was working on an album about his mom and he wanted to use some of my footage. He asked for my blessing and I said, “Oh, for sure, but I need your blessing for something. I’ll fly wherever you’re at.” His security called me like, “Can you come to D.R. tomorrow morning?” When I finally showed him the sizzle, he was like, “We’ve got to put this out tomorrow.”There’s a moment in the footage from the Dominican Republic when he goes off on what some might call a classic Kanye rant and you cut the camera. Why?COODIE I felt like I needed to pay attention. I’ve never filmed him like that. When I film him, there’s a certain way that he is with me — he’s himself. At that moment, he was not himself. When you’re taking medication, you’re not supposed to have alcohol. I knew Kanye wasn’t supposed to drink. It just so happened he had a drink in his hand. I wasn’t going to interrupt this business meeting to say something, but I kind of wanted to. It seemed like right after that drink, something happened. I said, “Forget this camera — this is my brother right here.”Once the film was in motion, how involved did he want to be and how involved did you want him to be?COODIE He said, “Let’s me and you do it,” and I told him, “You have to trust me on this.” Meaning no creative control. I said, “It would not be authentic if you have it.” He got all of that. And that was it.Then you get to the 1-yard line, 20-plus years later, and he drops a bomb on Instagram about wanting final cut.COODIE I almost fainted [laughs]. It was on my birthday — Jan. 18. He didn’t post that then, but I’m getting text messages. I’m like, “What? We finished!”On his birthday [in June], I went to L.A. with the rough cuts of the film to show him. I said the only way you can watch this film is with everybody who was there at the beginning who loves you. So we was getting a house, I had everybody ready to go — we’re going to laugh, cry, embrace Ye. But he wound up going to the South of France and it didn’t happen. Then my birthday, I get that text — next thing I know, I look up and here comes everybody with the cake. “Happy birthday to you!”Did he ask again about getting into the editing room?COODIE Nah, his process is to have people look at it, so we showed them the film. I did ask Kanye, “Did you watch the film?” And he said that’s not his process.The movies that we’ve done, nobody had final cut. We did Martin Luther King — the family didn’t have final cut. We did Muhammad Ali — they didn’t. Stephon Marbury didn’t see his documentary until aired it at Tribeca. Our intent is pure and that’s really all that matters.Do you have favorite stuff from the cutting room floor that you just couldn’t squeeze in there, no matter how much you wanted to?CHIKE There’s a scene when Kanye goes back to Chicago to perform at a tribute to people who were lost in the E2 tragedy [a stampede at a Chicago nightclub]. When he gets there, he ends up having to settle up a beef with another rapper. He almost gets a bottle cracked over his head — it gets real ugly. It could’ve gone somewhere worse. And Kanye’s not even that type of artist! But he still can’t escape the street mentality. And it deals with a beat that Jay-Z ended up with that helped propel Kanye’s career.COODIE It was “Never Change” on “The Blueprint.” He sold Jay-Z the track that he sold to [the Chicago rapper] Payroll as well. Payroll wrote the hook — “out hustling, same clothes for days.” Kanye let Payroll know he was about to sell it, but he also did Payroll’s hook. Kanye took care of Payroll after that, but Payroll was like, hold on … He said, “Kanye you’ve got to give me more.” I’m telling them like, nah! But for them to crush the beef was good, too.Kanye is back in the tabloids these days because of his divorce. When you see this celebrity hurricane side of his life, do you worry for him?COODIE I used to worry, but I know that God has his back. He almost died in a car accident a couple of times — he had a car accident in Chicago even before he moved to New York, flipped his truck over. A couple other incidents that I’ve seen — God is really looking out for him, for whatever reason. When I see this now, I’m like, it’s going to pass like everything else did. More