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    Timothée Chalamet Sings Live for the Bob Dylan Biopic, ‘A Complete Unknown’

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    The actor’s vocals so impressed the film’s director that he used the live recordings, instead of those prerecorded in a studio. Here’s a look at other actors who have hit their own high notes in musical biopics.In one trailer for the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” a fan pleads with the musician, played by Timothée Chalamet, saying that she can’t hear the music at his sold-out concert.Chalamet, his eyes hidden behind Dylan’s trademark Ray Ban sunglasses, his hair a frizzy mop, responds: “I’ll sing louder.”Biopics have often relied on creative license to portray a star, but Chalamet’s words are not just blowin’ in the wind. The songs in “Unknown,” directed by James Mangold, have resonated through generations, and Chalamet’s voice was so impressive that his live vocals — sung while performing in character — were kept for the final cut.That is not the industry standard. Some films use an original artist’s track while an actor lip-syncs. When actors in biopics do sing, it is common for them to record the vocals in a studio and then overdub them onscreen. Singing live on camera can leave a performance falling flat, especially if the actor is not a trained vocalist.But when done well, live vocals can add a touch of realism.“The idea was to get a little bit different sound in each different venue by using practical microphones from the period,” Tod Maitland, the sound mixer for “Unknown,” said in an interview with Variety this month. “That helped create a nice tapestry of sounds. But Timmy went 100 percent live. It was pretty amazing.”It’s not Chalamet’s first time at the mic — he sang in the 2023 film “Wonka,” and attended LaGuardia High School, a performing arts school in New York City.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Allan Blye, 87, Dies; ‘Smothers Brothers’ Writer and ‘Super Dave’ Creator

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      In his wide-ranging career, he also helped write Elvis Presley’s comeback special and appeared on an early version of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”Allan Blye, a television comedy writer and producer who helped cement the Smothers Brothers’ reputation for irreverence in the late 1960s and later collaborated with Bob Einstein to create the hapless daredevil character Super Dave Osborne, died on Oct. 4 at his home in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 87.His wife, Rita Blye, confirmed the death. She said he had been in hospice care for Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Blye was a writer and singer on variety shows in Canada when he received a surprise call in 1967 from Tom Smothers asking him to join the writing staff of the series that he and his and his brother, Dick, would be hosting on CBS.“I couldn’t believe it was Tom Smothers,” Mr. Blye said in an interview with the Television Academy in 2019. “I thought it was Rich Little doing an impression of Tom Smothers.”Tom, left, and Dick Smothers on the set of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in 1967. Mr. Blye helped establish the show’s outspoken tone. CBS, via Getty Images“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was unlike any other variety show. The brothers were renowned as a comical folk-singing duo: Tom played the naïve, guitar-playing buffoon, and Dick, who played the double bass, was the wise straight man. They had creative control of the series, which emboldened them and their writers to be more outspoken as they addressed politics, the Vietnam War, religion and civil rights — and their forthrightness during a divisive era increasingly angered some viewers, CBS censors, some of the network’s affiliates and conservative groups.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Book Review: ‘From Here to the Great Unknown,’ by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough

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      In a new memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown,” Elvis Presley’s daughter and granddaughter take turns exploring a messy legacy.FROM HERE TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN: A Memoir, by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough“What is the point of an autobiography?”Lisa Marie Presley asks this question toward the end of her incredibly sad memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown.”Presley died of a bowel obstruction — a complication of bariatric surgery — before she could finish the book, having endured 54 years of intense public scrutiny. Her daughter, Riley Keough, picked up where she left off, listening to interviews her mother had recorded for the project. Their perspectives appear in alternating sections — a haunting harmony that builds to a crescendo of heartbreak.The answer to Presley’s question comes from Keough, who is best known for her star turn in Amazon’s adaptation of “Daisy Jones & the Six”: The point of an autobiography — this one, anyway — is to show the toll of fame and addiction.Anyone who’s skimmed tabloid headlines at the grocery store knows the basics, but here’s a quick summary for online shoppers: Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Priscilla and Elvis Presley, grew up without stability or peace, hounded by paparazzi, criticized for her looks, her weight, her drug use, her marriage to Michael Jackson. From start to finish, her life took place in the public domain.“I guess I didn’t really have a shot in hell,” Presley writes.“My mom was really affected by what people wrote about her,” Keough tells us. “She had no siblings to share the burden, nobody who understood what it truly felt like. In a way she was the princess of America and didn’t want to be.”The first third of “From Here to the Great Unknown” is full of nostalgic musings about Graceland, the Presley family home in Memphis. We get a peek at the parts that aren’t on the tour. We learn about Lisa Marie’s tonsillectomy and her baby blue golf cart. She is just 9 when we see her father’s body leaving the house on a stretcher — his pajamas, his socks. We see his entourage picking over his belongings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Missouri Woman Charged in Scheme to Defraud Presleys and Sell Graceland

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      A woman named Lisa Jeanine Findley was arrested and accused of a brazen effort to foreclose on Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis.Federal authorities arrested a Missouri woman on Friday and accused her of orchestrating a brazen effort to shake down the Presley family by threatening to fraudulently foreclose on Graceland, Elvis’s home in Memphis, which is now a popular tourist attraction.The authorities said that they had arrested Lisa Jeanine Findley, 53, of Kimberling City, Mo., on charges of mail fraud and aggravated identity theft.“The defendant orchestrated a scheme to conduct a fraudulent sale of Graceland, falsely claiming that Elvis Presley’s daughter had pledged the historic landmark as collateral for a loan that she failed to repay before her death,” said Nicole M. Argentieri, the principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department.The arrest was made on the anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, who was found unresponsive at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977, and pronounced dead soon after at a hospital in Memphis. He was 42.If convicted, Ms. Findley faces a mandatory minimum of two years in prison for aggravated identity theft and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for mail fraud. A spokesman for the Justice Department said Friday afternoon that she had been detained and was in the custody of the U.S. Marshals pending extradition to Memphis.Exactly who was behind the threat to sell Graceland, a popular and lucrative tourist attraction that draws 600,000 visitors a year, had been a mystery.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Plotted to Sell Graceland? An Identity Thief Raises His Hand.

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      A person using an email for the company seeking to foreclose on the former home of Elvis Presley says his ring was behind the threat to sell the beloved landmark.The writer said he was an identity thief — a ring leader on the dark web, with a network of “worms” placed throughout the United States.In an email to The New York Times, he said his ring preyed on the dead, the unsuspecting and the elderly, especially those from Florida and California, using birth certificates and other documents to discover personal information that aided in their schemes.“We figure out how to steal,” he said. “That’s what we do.”Recently, the writer suggested, the group had turned its attention to a major target: the estate of Lisa Marie Presley, which last week faced a threat that Graceland was about to be foreclosed on and sold by a mysterious company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC.Media outlets often receive unsolicited emails from people who make outlandish claims. But this email arrived Friday in response to one sent by The Times to an email address that Naussany listed in a legal filing sent to a Tennessee court reviewing the foreclosure case.In its email, The Times referred to the company’s claim that Ms. Presley had borrowed $3.8 million from it, using Graceland as collateral. In the responses, which came from the email address The Times had written to, the writer described the foreclosure effort not as a legitimate attempt to collect on a debt, but as a scam.“I had fun figuring this one out and it didn’t succeed very well,” the email writer said. He said he was based in Nigeria and his email was written in Luganda, a Bantu language spoken in Uganda. But the filing with the email address was faxed from a toll-free number designed to serve North America; it was included in documents sent to the Chancery Court in Shelby County, Tenn., where the foreclosure case is still pending.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Blocks Attempt to Sell Graceland, at Least for Now

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      Elvis’s granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, had filed a lawsuit seeking to stop what her lawyers said was a fraudulent auction of her family home.Graceland will not be sold at auction, at least for now.On Wednesday, a Tennessee judge deferred ruling on an apparent attempt to sell Graceland, Elvis Presley’s former home in Memphis, but kept a temporary injunction in place that would prevent the property from going to auction imminently.The bizarre case came into wide public view this week when a lawsuit surfaced that had been filed by Mr. Presley’s granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough. In it, Ms. Keough sued to prevent what her lawyers described as a fraudulent effort to auction the home by a company claiming that Lisa Marie Presley — Ms. Keough’s mother and Mr. Presley’s daughter — had borrowed $3.8 million and put Graceland up as collateral before she died in 2023.At Wednesday’s hearing at Chancery Court in Shelby County, Tenn., the judge, Chancellor JoeDae L. Jenkins, said he needed to continue the case, in part because no one showed up in person to represent the company seeking to sell Graceland and in part because he said lawyers for Ms. Keough needed to present additional evidence.“Graceland is a part of this community, well loved by this community and indeed around the world,” Chancellor Jenkins said during the hearing, which lasted roughly 10 minutes. Delaying the trial, he reasoned, would allow for “adequate discovery” to take place.The defendants included a company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, which had scheduled a sale of Graceland for Thursday, according to court papers. The court said it had received a filing on Wednesday morning from a man named Gregory Naussany who had asked the court to continue the case.It was not clear when the next hearing would take place.Lawyers for Ms. Keough had argued that the company appeared to be a “false entity.” They also claimed that the company had presented fake documents purporting to show that Ms. Presley had borrowed the money and put Graceland up as collateral.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elvis Presley’s Granddaughter, Riley Keough, Sues to Block Graceland Sale

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      His granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, claims that a company is fraudulently planning to auction off Elvis’s home in Memphis.Lawyers for the actress Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, have sued to stop what they say is a fraudulent scheme to sell Graceland, the family’s cherished former home in Memphis.Court papers that Ms. Keough’s lawyers filed this month claim that a company planning to auction off Graceland is fraudulently claiming that her mother — Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who died in 2023 — had borrowed money and put Graceland up as collateral. The papers say that the company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, “appears to be a false entity” and that the documents it presented about the loan were also fake.“There is no foreclosure sale,” Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates Graceland, said in a statement, in which it also said that the lawsuit had been filed to “stop the fraud.”Graceland, a popular tourist attraction, is a major source of income for Elvis Presley Enterprises and the family trust.A representative for Ms. Keough, who controls her family’s trust, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. A lawyer representing Ms. Keough in the case also did not respond.Months after Lisa Marie Presley died, Naussany Investments presented documents claiming that she had borrowed $3.8 million from the company and “gave a deed of trust encumbering Graceland as security,” according to court papers filed in Shelby County, Tenn. Copies of the documents were provided to The New York Times by Elvis Presley Enterprises.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Was 1968 the Grammys’ Best Year Ever?

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      Before the 2024 awards on Sunday, revisit a ceremony where the Recording Academy got it right, honoring the Beatles, Bobbie Gentry, Aretha Franklin and more.In 1968 the Beatles won their first and only album of the year Grammy for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” PA Images, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,The 66th annual Grammy Awards take place on Sunday, and this year’s lineup of performers is pretty exceptional. I mean, Joni Mitchell is performing! For the first time ever at the Grammys! I could really just stop there, but Billy Joel, Billie Eilish, SZA, U2, Olivia Rodrigo, Burna Boy, Luke Combs, Dua Lipa, Travis Scott and more are scheduled to grace the stage. Will Joel and Eilish take this opportunity to start a supergroup called the Billies? Will SZA and U2 start an all-caps collaborative side project called SUZA2? Will Travis Scott meet Joni Mitchell, and if so, what will they talk about? The possibilities of this year’s ceremony are endless, and a little weird.To kick off Grammy week, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at another exceptional-if-slightly-odd year in Grammy history: the 10th annual ceremony, which took place on Feb. 29, 1968 and honored the music of 1967.The Grammys, infamously, do not always get it right. Sometimes their slights are laughably egregious (like when Metallica lost the 1989 award for best hard rock/heavy metal recording to … Jethro Tull); other times, they play things annoyingly safe (see: Beyoncé’s last three losses for album of the year). But just as a broken clock is right twice a day, sometimes justice actually is served at the Grammys. And 1968 was one of those years.Consider that album of the year went to a release that pushed the format forward into the future, and one that’s still often (and rightly) mentioned in lists of the greatest albums of all time. Some incredibly worthy artists won their first-ever Grammys that year: Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin and Tammy Wynette. Many of the songs and artists awarded have — gasp — actually stood the test of time.Today’s playlist is culled entirely from the winners of the 10th annual Grammys. Feed your meter, inflate that beautiful balloon and prepare to hop in a time machine ready to take you up, up and away.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): ‘Priscilla’ and ‘The Golden Bachelor’ Plumb Heartbreak

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Sofia Coppola’s new film “Priscilla,” a biopic of Priscilla Presley based on Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me: The True Story of the Love Between Priscilla Presley and the King of Rock N’ Roll.” An impressionistic take on the behind-the-scenes relationship of Elvis and Priscilla, it stands in contrast to the ornate extravaganza “Elvis,” directed by Baz Luhrmann, which was released last year.The hit reality show “The Golden Bachelor,” which follows 72-year-old widower Gerry Turner in his search for new love, and in so doing, inverts and maybe rescues the tired format of reality-television dating shows.New songs from Brent Faiyaz featuring Tommy Richman & FELIX! and Cody JohnsonSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More