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Will Anyone Give ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ a Chance?
Olivia Wilde’s new film is trying to fight free of its pre-release reputation.Years ago, when I was a film critic, I was asked out for coffee by a guy who’d just been hired at the review-aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes. I can’t remember the purpose of the meeting. I just recall the sense — as he ventilated about the site’s “Tomatometer” rating, which would soon crush all my elitist insights into hard data — that I’d been summoned to witness the digging of my own grave.This was actually fine with me. I was already demoralized by the whole enterprise. I’d always seen the role of the critic as a conduit, someone who has an aesthetic experience and then reports on what it was like; I never cared to tell others what to see or avoid, imposing a hegemony of tastes and interests that I didn’t believe in. At work, though, I was feeling the pressure to serve readers with ratings and recommendations — and, increasingly, sites like Rotten Tomatoes seemed to push a binary of “good” and “bad,” all based on consensus. It was depressing, all this holding up of fingers to the wind. Consensus is a snowball with a hard, mineral center, barreling down a slope, and few people want to be on the wrong side.Sometimes consensus accretes around the story of a movie, even before people see the film itself. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a screening of “Don’t Worry Darling,” which I’d been looking forward to since first getting a glimpse of its poster. I had been vaguely aware of some noise emanating from the film’s press rollout, I suppose, but it wasn’t until the now-infamous spit video that I realized just how much flak the movie was catching. The video showed Harry Styles, one of the film’s stars, approaching his audience seat at the Venice Film Festival, suavely buttoning his jacket, leaning down and then — according to nothing but gleeful online supposition — purportedly hocking a loogie on another of the film’s stars, Chris Pine, who stops clapping and, with his eyes, traces a trajectory from Styles’ lips to his own lap. No actual spit is discernible in the video, and no motive was ascribed. But none were needed. Those few frames of video were scrutinized, analyzed, slowed, zoomed, dissected and compared to the Zapruder film so often that the joke begged for mercy.People were happy to believe anything — even the baseless-rumor equivalent of jumping the shark.To me, though, the Cold War artifact it recalled was Kremlinology — the practice of scrying every available scrap of information to discern the hidden motivations and power struggles of distant, unknowable figures. The events that drew such close attention to “Don’t Worry Darling” were not huge ones, in the scheme of things: They included a supposed feud between the director, Olivia Wilde, and the lead actress, Florence Pugh, possibly involving a pay gap between leads; the actor Shia LaBeouf’s being replaced, under disputed circumstances, with Styles; LaBeouf’s leaking messages from Wilde about Pugh; Wilde’s being served with custody papers from her ex-fiancé, Jason Sudeikis, while onstage at CinemaCon; and, above all, Wilde’s becoming romantically involved with Styles, 10 years her junior. Where the theoretical animosity between Styles and Pine was supposed to fit in was unclear. But by then people were happy to believe anything — even the baseless-rumor equivalent of jumping the shark — as long as it kept building the story of a woman who fostered a work environment so fraught that one star would spit on another, in public and on camera, for no apparent reason.More on ‘Don’t Worry Darling’In this much gossiped-about feminist gothic, Florence Pugh plays a seemingly happy housewife whose world starts to crack apart.Review: “If Pugh’s performance never gets beneath the shiny, satirical surface, it’s because there’s no place for it or her to go,” our critic writes of the film.Publicity Crisis: It was one of the hottest projects in Hollywood. But a series of missteps on the promotional trail, hinting at supposed feuds and behind-the-scenes drama, have raised questions about the film’s viability and about Olivia Wilde, its director.Bad Reputation: Amid all the rumors and negative press, a vocal portion of the public seems to have grown oddly invested in witnessing Wilde’s comeuppance. Will that affect the movie’s ratings?“Don’t Worry Darling” is just the most recent example of a film maudit, or “cursed film.” That was the term coined for Jean Cocteau’s Festival du Film Maudit in 1949, describing works that had been wrongfully neglected, or deemed too outrageous to merit serious attention — “movies rendered marginal by disrepute,” as J. Hoberman would later write in The Village Voice. Films made by women are not the only ones stuck in this defensive position, but they seem disproportionately prone to it, often with criticism centering on the director herself. (Elaine May’s experience on “Ishtar” was such that Hoberman classed her as a cineaste maudit; she wouldn’t direct again for decades.) Hints of a production’s chaos or excess are less likely to be taken as signs of unruly genius, and more often framed as messiness or lack of authority. The more that talk swirled around “Don’t Worry Darling,” the more its quality — and then, specifically, Wilde’s competence — were called into question.Out comes the Tomatometer, and the party’s over.Cinema has a century’s worth of lore about films troubled by budget overages, clashing personalities and on-set affairs: Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski’s wanting to kill each other while making “Fitzcarraldo,” mental breakdowns on the set of “Apocalypse Now,” Peter Bogdanovich’s leaving his actual genius of a wife after an affair with a young Cybill Shepherd on “The Last Picture Show.” These productions were plagued by bad press and rumors, but they never faced the wrath of stan Twitter. These days, fans spread rumors and memes, which are picked up by media outlets, which disguise their prurience with speculation about box-office prospects or reviews. Then out comes the Tomatometer, and the party’s over.But of course the idea that this consensus opinion emerges from some pure, objective place is disingenuous. Press always colors reviews — and now some vocal portion of the public seems oddly invested in Wilde’s comeuppance, a fact we may see reflected in ratings. (Given statements Wilde has made about some of the film’s real-world inspirations, it’s not hard to imagine the online response including the kind of organized backlash that has greeted other disfavored films.) And while critics’ responses won’t be actively malicious, they won’t be magically free of their own biases, either. “More or less the definition of the history of cinema,” Richard Brody wrote in The New Yorker in 2012, “is: the stuff that most of the best-known critics didn’t like, or damned with faint praise — it isn’t that they didn’t care for it, but that they didn’t care about it.” Male film critics outnumber female ones 2 to 1, and tend to award “slightly higher average quantitative ratings to films with male protagonists,” according to studies conducted by Martha Lauzen of San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.It’s odd that this could be the fate of “Don’t Worry Darling,” a film about men trapping women in a regressive, suffocating place where dissent means repudiation and exile — a film whose big plot developments must be hard for Wilde to resist talking about, given how much the narrative surrounding the film echoes their point. But it’s impossible to discuss without spoiling the story, so I’ll just share an anecdote. My 14-year-old daughter came with me to the screening, unencumbered by external baggage. When the credits began to roll, she announced, “That was the best movie I’ve ever seen in my whole life.” Seeing Wilde’s name among the cast, she asked which character the director had played. When I told her, she was impressed. She said: “I want to be her. I want to do what she does.” It made me happy to hear this. And then I started to worry.Source photographs: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images; Screen grab from Warner Bros.Carina Chocano is the author of the essay collection “You Play the Girl” and a contributing writer for the magazine. She frequently writes for the magazine’s Screenland column. More
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In Toronto, Films by Women About Women, but That’s Where the Similarities End
The Toronto International Film Festival returns to business mostly as usual with throngs of excited attendees and some of the year’s most anticipated new movies.Each year, filmgoers of all persuasions, casual viewers and true believers both, descend on the Toronto International Film Festival to sample and to gorge. Cannes has the red carpet, Telluride has Oscar contenders and Sundance has the next big thing, maybe. Toronto has bulk. It’s stuffed with movies of every type, size, style and ambition. Some are destined for immortality and others will enter the Oscar marathon that has already begun. Still other titles will languish on streaming platforms; some of these will deserve better fates.The festival, which ends Sunday, returned to full capacity this month after two years of severely limited in-person screenings. With mask mandates and other restrictions lifted, the crowds in theaters felt close to prepandemic levels, though not at their crushing worst. The throngs outside its main locations were marginally thinner, too, though they surged like tidal waves for the flashiest guests, notably Taylor Swift (accompanying her suitably titled 10-minute “All Too Well: The Short Film”) and Harry Styles (one of the stars of the gay period romance “My Policeman”).“Harry, Harry, Harry!” I heard one afternoon, as I rushed to a screening, past men and women racing toward a scrum of security personnel and parked black S.U.V.s. If Swift and Styles start making more movies and in-person appearances, theatrical distribution might have a chance to recover. Toronto may not do glamour all that well, but over the years it has transformed into an essential industry destination partly by “eventizing” itself, creating an 11-day spectacle for attendees and gawkers alike while serving as a launchpad for new movies like “The Woman King,” which opens Friday.Viola Davis in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.”Ilze Kitshoff/Sony PicturesToronto skims a lot of cream from other festivals, giving audiences early peeks at the major titles that will be much discussed in coming months. And while journalists can often preview these offerings back home, it’s a singular experience seeing new movies with packed audiences, witnessing how jokes land and surprises shock. One movie that’s guaranteed to play extremely well is Laura Poitras’s elegantly structured documentary about the photographer Nan Goldin, “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” which just won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. A personal-meets-the-political portrait that goes deep on Goldin’s opium-epidemic activism, it left the audience audibly moved; the distributor should hand out tissues with every ticket.Spotify should ready itself for an uptick in streaming of Louis Armstrong’s music. One highlight of my festival week was the documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues,” which was directed by Sacha Jenkins, son of the filmmaker Horace B. Jenkins. (Apple has the documentary, but Sacha Jenkins said before one screening that it would also open in theaters.) Drawing on Armstrong’s vast personal archive — including reels of his taped musings — the movie builds beautifully into a portrait of a genius as well as the country that he graced and that didn’t give him the love he deserved. The music is of course brilliant, though some critics wanted more musicology to go with it.The audience I saw “Louis Armstrong” with seemed thrilled. The hothouse environment of festivals can be wildly misleading simply because people are so pumped to be in attendance, which can make widely reported metrics like the duration of standing ovations meaningless (boos are far more instructive). But watching a movie with other festivalgoers invariably heats up and enlivens a room, creates an electric vibe, though it helps when directors introduce their work. Steven Spielberg did just that for the premiere of “The Fabelmans,” a wistful coming-of-age story about a young film lover who grows up to become, well, you know.Paul Dano, left, Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord and Michelle Williams in “The Fabelmans,” about Steven Spielberg’s coming-of-age.Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin EntertainmentWritten by Spielberg and his frequent collaborator, Tony Kushner, the story tracks the awakening, cinematic and otherwise, of the young Sammy (played as a teenager by Gabriel LaBelle). The kid is the least interesting part of the movie, which perhaps sounds funny and even insulting but makes sense given that it’s about someone who grows up to make larger-than-life (Spielbergian!) fantasies. The father is played by Paul Dano, who seems to have borrowed Michael Stuhlbarg’s voice for the role, but the movie is anchored by Michelle Williams’s sensitive performance as the mother, Mitzi. Williams’s affecting intensity gives the movie regular shocking jolts of passion, attenuating its otherwise overly easy, overly familiar flow.“The Fabelmans” didn’t set the festival on fire; its restraint and lightly elegiac mood are unlikely to get most pulses racing, even if these qualities serve it extremely well. As he did in his version of “West Side Story,” which was also written by Kushner, Spielberg embraces a kind of poetic realism in “The Fabelmans” that I’m still getting a handle on. He’s looking at his own life through the mist, as you would expect. And while he shows the tears, if not necessarily the snot, Spielberg is also, in his singular way, engaging with some of the corrosive truths about his childhood, particularly with respect to Mitzi. It’s an interesting movie that I look forward to revisiting.Mitzi Fabelman is just one of the many women characters who made this year’s Toronto memorable. Another is Lib Wright, the brisk British nurse played by a strong Florence Pugh in the period drama “The Wonder.” Directed by Sebastián Lelio from Emma Donoghue’s novel, it follows Lib as she journeys to an isolated village in 19th-century rural Ireland, where she’s been employed by some stern local men to observe a girl, Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy), who’s said not to have eaten in months. Is her fast a miracle, a scam, or something else? Not all of Lelio’s choices work, specifically his decision to call attention to the movie’s artifice (it opens and closes on a soundstage), but its horror and righteous fury are undeniable.Florence Pugh in “The Wonder,” set in 19th-century Ireland.NetflixPart of what made the bounty of all these women characters so pleasurable is that a fair number appear in movies directed by women. In the not-distant past, women often felt boxed in by their subjects, though especially by their modest resources. That’s less the case now, and day after day at Toronto, you could watch all manner of female-driven pictures, from spectacles to chamber pieces. Some women were as recognizable as your own life (if generally more interesting) and others were entirely, engagingly different. For someone who makes a living primarily writing about movies made by men with men and for men, it was especially gratifying.That was the case even when the movies didn’t entirely work or felt off the mark. I can’t vouch for the historical accuracy of “Emily,” a moving, sexually charged drama about Emily Brontë directed by the actress Frances O’Connor. Certainly I never heard about some of the wilder things that this Emily (an excellent Emma Mackey) does throughout her tumultuous, tragically abbreviated, dramatically inflected life. Even so, with its performances, its unabashed romanticism and visual choices — landscapes, textures, gleaming light and bodies — the movie persuasively opens up an artistic consciousness, showing how Brontë became the writer that she did. However fanciful its portrait of the artist as a young woman, it’s very effective.Alice Diop’s electric contemporary drama “Saint Omer” turns on a very different question of truth. Set partly in a French courtroom, it centers on a young writer, Rama (Kayije Kagame), sitting in on the trial of another woman, Laurence (Guslagie Malanda), who’s admitted to drowning her baby. Intellectually galvanizing and emotionally harrowing, the story explores motherhood, race and postcolonial France with control, lucidity and compassion. It’s an extraordinary work that’s all the more impressive because it’s the first fiction feature from Diop, who’s an established documentarian.“Saint Omer” will be on the slate in the forthcoming New York Film Festival and so will “The Eternal Daughter,” from the British filmmaker Joanna Hogg. It too concerns motherhood, though in a different register and to dissimilar ends. It focuses on a relationship between a mother-and-daughter duo, similar characters who are both played with distinct nuance by Tilda Swinton. The story largely takes place at a grand hotel where the two have come for an intimate, progressively more fraught getaway. Over the course of the story, the time frame subtly, at times comically, shifts, as does the relationship, which — like Swinton’s twinned performances — proves devastating. More
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Will the Spiraling Publicity Harm ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ at the Box Office?
A series of missteps on the promotional trail has raised questions about the film’s viability and its director, Olivia Wilde.It was one of the hottest projects Hollywood had seen in years. Eighteen bidders. An ascendant female director. Florence Pugh, the actress of the moment, shooting upward like a rocket. “Don’t Worry Darling” was set up to be a smash.But now, the $35 million production is being referred to around town as “Kill Your Darlings.” Over the past three weeks, the once highly anticipated movie has become a spectacle in all the wrong ways, with its director, Olivia Wilde, self-immolating on the publicity trail. Now all eyes are on the box office as the film — one of only three Warner Bros. is releasing theatrically through the remainder of the year — debuts nationally on Sept. 23.Signs of trouble began appearing in March when Wilde’s personal life became entangled with her promotional efforts on a stage in Las Vegas, where her introduction of the “Don’t Worry Darling” trailer was co-opted by a process server presenting her with custody papers from her ex-fiancé, the “Ted Lasso” actor Jason Sudeikis.That spiraled into internet gossip over Pugh’s lack of substantive promotion for the film, which led to reports of a clash between the director and the star over the rumored on-set affair between Wilde and Harry Styles, the pop star in his first major film role. (Wilde has declined to discuss the rumors other than to tell Vanity Fair that stories that she left Sudeikis for Styles were “completely inaccurate.”) Things ratcheted up when Wilde told Variety she had fired Shia LaBeouf, the actor first cast in the role that eventually went to Styles, only to have LaBeouf dispute her account with both audio and video evidence backing up his contention that he quit.The saga peaked this month in a tense news conference at the Venice Film Festival, which Pugh did not attend. When asked about the controversy, Wilde tersely replied: “The internet feeds itself. I don’t feel the need to contribute. I think it’s sufficiently well-nourished.”Wilde with some cast members of “Don’t Worry Darling” in Venice: Harry Styles, left, Gemma Chan and Chris Pine. The star, Florence Pugh, skipped the news conference.Joel C Ryan/Invision, via Associated PressWilde declined to comment for this article, canceling a long-scheduled interview last week just hours before it was to take place. A representative for Pugh also declined to comment.This scandal ranks rather low on Hollywood’s outrage meter. Stephen Galloway, the dean of the Chapman University Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and the author of “Truly, Madly,” the story of the whirlwind romance between Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, characterized it as “a messy fling.” But the “Don’t Worry Darling” situation is high-profile enough that it could have the power to dim the excitement around Wilde’s potential ascent as Hollywood’s bright new directing talent.The film centers on Alice and Jack (Pugh and Styles), a wildly-in-love married couple whose idyllic 1950s existence belies a more sinister reality. Originally conceived by Carey and Shane Van Dyke (the grandsons of Dick Van Dyke) in a script that was featured on the Black List, a compendium of the best unproduced screenplays of the year, “Don’t Worry Darling” was rewritten by Katie Silberman (Wilde’s “Booksmart”). It became the subject of a bidding war, with the New Line division of Warner Bros. landing the title thanks in part to its commitment to releasing the film theatrically.Now “Don’t Worry Darling,” which is set to debut in more than 2,000 theaters, is in jeopardy of falling flat. Based on pre-release surveys that track consumer interest, box office experts had predicted roughly $20 million in opening-weekend ticket sales. In recent days, those estimates have cooled to about $18 million. Surveys have shown that ticket sales could be as low as $16 million. Warner Bros. declined to comment on box office projections but an insider at the studio who was not permitted to speak on the record said it had always expected about $18 million and that interest had not fluctuated.Early reviews have not been kind. Rotten Tomatoes currently has the film hovering at a 38 percent score, squarely in the rotten category. Many critics have mentioned the scandal surrounding the film. The Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang wondered whether Alice could be “a more fitting stand-in for Wilde, a talented director trying to fight her way out of a misogynistic system, one that wouldn’t blink twice at a male filmmaker in a similar position?”Styles and Pugh in the film, which is opening Sept. 23.Warner Bros.Is the reaction to the tabloid controversy misogyny at work, as Chang suggested? Male directors, after all, have a long history of both becoming combative with the press and engaging in on-set affairs. Or will this become a case of Hollywood adding Wilde, a daughter of the journalists and documentarians Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, to the life’s-too-short list, meaning that this episode will overshadow her talent? Some question, given the rift with Pugh and her dispute with LaBeouf, whether talent will want to work with Wilde in the future.“There’s some degree of sexism in this,” Galloway said. “Male directors have done this for decades and gotten away with it. A female director does it and it explodes. That’s unfair. On the other hand, what she did is wrong, just as it was wrong for all the male directors to behave like male chauvinist pigs. Part of me feels bad for her being judged by a different standard. Part of me says, ‘There is a modern standard which we should all be upholding.’”What’s next for Wilde is not clear. She was scheduled to follow “Don’t Worry Darling” with “Perfect,” about the gymnast Kerri Strug. But according to three people with knowledge of the project who were granted anonymity to discuss its status, Wilde abandoned the movie after asking for multiple rewrites from different screenwriters before walking away, believing the script was still not ready for production.“It became clear to me that this year was a time for me to be a stay-at-home mom,” she told Variety. “It was not the year for me to be on a set, which is totally all-encompassing.”She has two projects in early development: a new Marvel movie, which two people involved said was “Spider-Woman,” and an untitled holiday comedy that Universal Pictures has had in the works since 2019.Some believe the attention caused by the scandal could bring more moviegoers to theaters, following the adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.“I think that even a title like this with A-list talent attached, increased awareness in this challenging marketplace totally can help people to know that it exists, it’s out there and it’s coming soon,” said Joe Quenqua, a veteran strategic communications executive.Warner Bros. is continuing with its original marketing strategy. The studio announced last week that its Sept. 19 IMAX experience, which will include a screening of the film and a live question-and-answer session in 100 locations across the country, is the fastest-selling live event in IMAX’s history.Wilde will be in attendance. Pugh will not. More
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Venice: ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Faces the Press, but Where Is Florence Pugh?
Though the movie’s star skipped the media session, director Olivia Wilde called rumors of their feud ‘endless tabloid gossip.’VENICE — Even before the talent filed in for the “Don’t Worry Darling” news conference on Monday afternoon at the Venice Film Festival, the name placards on the dais told a story.Though the filmmaker and top-billed star are typically seated next to each other, the placards for the director, Olivia Wilde, and her leading man, Harry Styles, were spaced far apart, with co-stars Chris Pine and Gemma Chan in between them, so photos of the rumored couple would be harder to snap. And there was no placard at all for the film’s star, Florence Pugh, whose no-show at the session further deepened rumors of a rift between her and Wilde.The premise of “Don’t Worry Darling” is juicy enough on its own: Pugh plays a housewife with a picture-perfect 1950s marriage who suspects that the carefully manicured world around her is a sinister illusion. But the movie’s behind-the-scenes drama has been even juicier, and after weeks of headlines and speculation, Monday’s news conference proved to be a hotter ticket than many of Venice’s major premieres.A recap of the drama thus far:Fans initially figured something was amiss when Pugh, who is normally eager to promote her projects on social media, appeared to be giving “Don’t Worry Darling” the cold shoulder. Indeed, Pugh has done notably little promo for the film whether on social media or in traditional outlets, and the usual onslaught of press junkets and interviews required for a movie and star of this scale appears to have been waived.Florence Pugh as a ’50s-style housewife in “Don’t Worry Darling.”Merrick Morton/Warner Bros., via Associated PressPugh’s reps maintained that she has been too busy filming her new role in “Dune: Part Two” to commit to obligations, including the Venice news conference, but “Dune” star Timothée Chalamet was able to clear several days to promote his romantic drama “Bones and All” in Venice. And one would presume that since Warner Bros. is distributing both “Don’t Worry Darling” and the “Dune” sequel, an accommodating schedule could have been carved out for Pugh the moment she signed on for the latter film, especially since it features a sprawling ensemble cast.Puck’s Matthew Belloni recently reported that Pugh and Wilde began feuding because of the on-set affair between Wilde and Styles, writing that Pugh “wasn’t a fan of her director disappearing so often with her leading man” between camera setups. Indeed, Wilde’s personal life has received outsized scrutiny during this promotional tour, not simply because she is dating a famous pop star but also because her ex-fiancé, the “Ted Lasso” star Jason Sudeikis, had her served with custody papers while she was onstage promoting “Don’t Worry Darling” at CinemaCon in April.It’s worth noting, too, that a significant portion of Styles’s fan base resents the presence of Wilde in his life and continually whips up social-media trending topics about her in a bid to damage her sophomore film. No matter that if “Don’t Worry Darling” tanks, it would presumably wound their pop idol’s nascent film career: The flames of passion, once fanned, blow indiscriminately in every direction.Because of all these behind-the-scenes narratives, many expected fireworks at the Venice media session. But having sat through quite a few of these, I knew that the festival press corps is tame and given to blandishments; in the early going, after Wilde, Styles, and the rest took their seats, most of the questions were simply about how Styles managed to juggle his music and movie careers.“Personally, I find them to be opposite in a lot of ways,” Styles said. “What I like about acting is the feeling that I have no idea what I’m doing.”But around the halfway mark, a journalist finally broke through the glaze and asked Wilde the big question: Would she like to clear the air about her rumored falling-out with Pugh?“Florence is a force,” Wilde replied evenly, noting that Pugh would at least walk the red carpet at the film’s Venice premiere. “We are so grateful that she is able to make it tonight despite being in production on ‘Dune.’ I know as a director how disruptive it is to lose an actor even for a day.”Wilde continued to wax rhapsodic about her leading lady — “I can’t say enough how honored I am to have her as our lead,” she said — and then pivoted: “As for all the endless tabloid gossip and noise out there, the internet feeds itself. I don’t feel the need to contribute. I think it’s sufficiently well-nourished.”At that, some friendly journalists broke into mild applause, but The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Ritman rose with a follow-up: “I would like to ask about the noise you just mentioned.”“The question has been answered,” replied the moderator, Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.Ritman protested that he had a separate question about Shia LaBeouf, who was initially cast as the male lead in “Don’t Worry Darling” and left the film under disputed, clearly contentious circumstances. In a recent Variety cover story, Wilde claimed she had fired LaBeouf because the actor, who has been accused of abuse by his ex-girlfriend FKA twigs, “was not conducive to the ethos that I demand in my productions.”LaBeouf replied with a statement declaring he had not been fired but instead quit the film of his own volition, supplying Variety with text messages from Wilde and a video she sent LaBeouf asking him to consider staying on “Don’t Worry Darling.” In the video, Wilde says LaBeouf’s departure could be a “wake-up call for Miss Flo.” Minutes after it leaked online, Wilde’s diminutive nickname for Pugh became a Twitter trending topic.Still, the moderator of the Venice news conference refused to allow the line of questioning. “I think this question has been answered,” D’Agnolo Vallan said firmly as the other actors on the dais stared neutrally into space. Two more questions were taken from other journalists and then the session wrapped.“It felt ridiculous,” Ritman told me later, after his inquiry to Wilde was denied. “She hadn’t already answered the question, and it seemed like it had already been carefully arranged with the moderator beforehand.”But in Venice, as in Hollywood, careful choreography is par for the course. Five minutes after Wilde was asked why Pugh had missed the news conference, her star was photographed sauntering down a deck in Venice, dressed to the nines in purple Valentino. Maybe her plane went through Newark? More
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The Harry Styles Show (and Some Music) Comes to Madison Square Garden
The first two nights of a 15-concert run at Madison Square Garden were heavy on charisma, banter and nods to the past.Over the weekend, Harry Styles began a 15-night stand at Madison Square Garden, an impressive feat befitting one of the most popular musicians in the world. (He’ll begin a similar stretch in October at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. — his tour supporting his latest album, “Harry’s House,” consists of a series of residencies.) But Styles, who came to fame as part of the British boy band One Direction, is still relatively early in his solo career, and is still establishing his sonic ideas. Two New York Times critics attended the first two nights of his Love on Tour run in New York to see how he wielded his gravitational pull.JON CARAMANICA I always liked One Direction, more or less. Or maybe I liked what the group represented: a rejection of the hyperprocessed boy band, and by extension an acknowledgment that doing the least can still earn you the most. They weren’t trying to delude audiences about their artistry — their casualness was foundational to their appeal. But that approach wears thin in a solo act, and time and again during the Harry Styles show at the Garden on Saturday night, I found myself vexed. Off-the-charts charisma, collective exuberance, decently competent band, and yet at the center of it all, Styles was inscrutable. Musically, at least. I’ve rarely if ever seen someone more confident in their ownership of the stage, but everything underneath felt slight. All razzle, no dazzle. What am I missing? (I’m not missing anything.)The set included songs from Styles’s repertoire that lean toward mid-1970s rock.The New York TimesLINDSAY ZOLADZ Hmm, Jon, maybe a boa? Despite all of the construction around Madison Square Garden, I had no difficulty finding the venue’s entrance: I just followed the trail of rainbow feathers shed from the signature Styles neckwear that at least half of the audience seemed to be sporting. My thoughts today (and over the next several weeks of Styles’s 15-date residency) are with the Garden’s cleanup crew.I’ve long considered One Direction to be the quintessential boy band of the fan-service era — expertly primed to respond to the demands of their devoted, social-media savvy stan army — and after catching Styles’s show on Sunday night, I’m ready to declare him the defining solo artist of that era, too. I am not sure I’ve ever seen a pop star wave so much from the stage in my entire life? Roughly a third of his performance seemed to comprise waving, pointing and blowing kisses to various sections of the audience, whose volume approximated a jet taking off. Most of the time I could not hear Styles’s voice well enough to determine if he was hitting all the notes, though the crowd’s reaction was energetic enough that they did not seem to care. This show felt, as so much of Styles’s music does, first and foremost for the fans, which — I agree — can sometimes make the man at the center of it all feel like a bit of an enigma.The Dreamy World of Harry StylesThe British pop star and former member of the boy-band One Direction has grown into a magnetic and provocative performer.A 15-Night Stand: The first two nights of Harry Styles’ run at Madison Square Garden were heavy on charisma, banter and nods to the past.New Album: The record-breaking album “Harry’s House” is a testament to the singer’s sense of generosity and devotion to the female subject.Styler Fashion: Stylers, as the pop star’s fans are called, love to dress in homage to their idol. Here are some of the best looks seen at a concert.Opening Up: For his solo debut, Styles agreed to a Times interview. He was slippery in conversation, deflecting questions with politeness.CARAMANICA Let’s try to distill the Harry Styles musical proposition. He has nowhere near the determined agita of, say, Shawn Mendes; nowhere near the vocal litheness of Justin Bieber. (Also:#FreeZayn) And it goes without saying that despite the rampant Eltonisms on display throughout Styles’s solo catalog, and the (sub?)conscious echoes of John’s sartorial glamour in Styles’s Gucci gear, he has nowhere near John’s verve or panache. It is all quite a brittle foundation upon which to build this fame skyscraper.But yes, the waving. Also the utterly-at-ease shimmying. And that thing he did mid-show where he took a fan’s cellphone and tried calling her ex on it. (Josh, if you’re reading this, you got washed, buddy — everyone at Madison Square Garden hates you.) See also: him singing “Happy Birthday” to his friend Florence. Florence Welch, of the Machine? No. Florence Pugh, his co-star in the upcoming film “Don’t Worry Darling”? Also no. Florence, daughter of Rob Stringer, chairman of Sony Music Group? Yes.This is the essence of his appeal — his is not a top-down sort of fame. He’s the approachable but protective friend, the one who leads with good judgment and progressive wholesomeness. (At previous shows, he’s helped people come out, or to confess their love.) That’s part of why, even though public discussion of Styles often centers on his dating life or the ways he flirts with gender fluidity, his actual show is conventional and chaste. The most risqué bit was when he explained how the in-the-round performance would work. Sometimes, “we’ll be ass to face,” he said. “I’ll be sure to distribute face and ass equally throughout the show — there’s plenty to go around.” It was cheeky. Even “Watermelon Sugar,” his lightly erotic hit, was dry.The New York TimesZOLADZ Styles did not call any exes at our show, but he did a funny bit where he attempted to count all of the “golf dads” in the audience — 34, apparently. He also broke some solemn “bad news” about something that had happened just before the show: “I’ve blown my tongue on some soup.” So yes, effortlessly charismatic banter, and he works every corner of the stage. The set and wardrobe were a bit more minimal than I anticipated; I expected at least one costume change. But I would describe the look he was going for, in a red-and-white-striped jumpsuit, as “sexy candy cane.” The fashion, the fans, the force of personality — it feels like we’re talking about everything but the music here, which is perhaps telling. How did the songs strike you, Jon, and did you get anything out of them that you don’t get on his records?CARAMANICA Basically, we’re of opposite opinions on Styles’s albums — I’m more partial to the most recent one, “Harry’s House,” and I know you lean more toward the previous one, “Fine Line.” When the songs were … funkier — and I use that designation extremely loosely — his performance felt more full. I’m thinking “Satellite,” and also “Cinema,” both from the new album — the rhythm section is in the lead, but doesn’t overpower him. I also liked what he did with “Adore You,” melting the chorus into more of a restrained tease. But when he went unadorned, like on “Matilda,” the air in the room felt heavier. And “Sign of the Times,” the first Styles solo hit, was ponderous, a karaoke take on mid-1970s power-mope.Styles’s performance was heavy on waving, pointing and blowing kisses to various sections of the audience.The New York TimesZOLADZ I sometimes detect a divide between the music Styles wants to make — the big, bold, if somewhat generic-sounding ’70s-style rock of his first album — and the more pop-oriented fare that better suits his personality. Not surprisingly, the songs that worked best for me live were the ones that manage to satisfy both of those impulses, like the groovy, Tame Impala-esque “Daylight” or the still-ubiquitous hit “As It Was.” I wish he’d ended the set on that note, but regrettably he had one more song to play after that, the stomping, Led-Zeppelin-cosplay rocker “Kiwi,” an unfortunate live staple that I consider one of his weakest songs. But, as ever, he seemed to relish playing the role of bombastic rock star, even if the material itself didn’t always electrify.I found it refreshing, though, that Styles is not shying away from his former group on this tour: The first song on his preperformance playlist is One Direction’s “Best Song Ever” — much to the shrieking delight of the thousands of fans who sang along to every word — and during his set he actually played a louder and more rock-oriented version of One Direction’s 2011 hit “What Makes You Beautiful,” which happens to be from an album that his former bandmate Louis Tomlinson recently called a disparaging word we can’t print here. How did you feel about Styles’s raucous 1D cover, Jon?CARAMANICA That was one of the musical high points, if not the peak. It was as if a rowdy bar band momentarily inhabited Styles’s very deliberately understated crew. On Saturday, too, people absolutely lost it when the opening bars of “Best Song Ever” hit right after the conclusion of Blood Orange’s temperate and tasteful opening set. It was the purest release of pent-up demand that I’ve witnessed in quite some time. And that’s how the rest of the night went, too — demand leading supply. Fervor without feeling (and certainly without friction). An arena-size canvas merely doodled on with pencil.And for the record, a friend lent me her pink-and-white boa for a few songs — it didn’t help. More
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From Harry Styles to BTS, Pop’s Biggest Stars Are Looking to Residencies
Extended runs in one venue, once associated with legacy acts, have become popular with stars including Harry Styles and BTS, lowering bills and building hype as touring costs rise.On Saturday, Harry Styles will take the stage at Madison Square Garden as part of the tour for his chart-topping new album, “Harry’s House.”Then, next Sunday, he will play the Garden again. Next Monday, too. And another 12 times through Sept. 21. At the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., Styles will perform another 15 times in October and November. The entire North American leg of the singer’s latest tour, which opened in Toronto this week, consists of 42 shows in just five cities.Styles’s tour is the most prominent example of a bubbling trend of concert residencies: extended runs by artists in a limited number of cities and venues. In a rebounding touring market, with concert-starved audiences buying tickets in record numbers — and at higher prices than ever — these bookings are deliberate choices by prominent artists to reduce their time on the road and set up shop in far fewer places than they could on a traditional tour.Besides Styles’s, high-profile residencies have been completed recently by the K-pop phenom BTS and the Mexican rock band Maná, which has booked 12 dates since March at the Forum, the group’s only performances in the United States all year. In Las Vegas, the place that arguably birthed the residency format, Adele will begin a 32-date weekend engagement at Caesars Palace in November, and Katy Perry and Miranda Lambert also have dates lined up for the fall.“We thought doing a whole tour would be really challenging, maybe impossible, given all the variables,” said Fher Olvera, the lead singer of Maná.Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesAccording to talent agents and industry observers, the reasons include clever branding, the protection of artists and crews in the pandemic and a cold calculation of financial efficiencies. More concerts in fewer cities means fewer trucks on the road and lower bills all around.Those financial advantages are key at a time when gas prices are high and the concert world must deal with the same supply-chain shortages that have hit other businesses, said Ray Waddell, who covered the touring business for decades for Billboard magazine and now runs the media and conferences division of the Oak View Group, which operates sports and entertainment venues around the world.“The math is challenging right now,” Waddell said. “It costs way more to tour, more to produce the shows for everybody, more for labor. At the same time, inflation is going to impact discretionary income and force fans to make choices. That’s bad calculus.”For artists like Adele, Harry Styles and BTS, whose vast fan bases seem to have unquenchable demand, asking fans to come to them — and perhaps incur travel expenses of their own — may not be a great risk. But this model does not translate well below the superstar level, agents say.Of course, extended bookings are nothing new. Bruce Springsteen played Giants Stadium 10 times in the summer of in 2003. Prince played 21 shows around Los Angeles in 2011, most at the Forum. But the pandemic may have led to a critical mass.For artists and venues, touring has had a much-needed return to full capacity this year. According to Pollstar, a trade publication that follows the concert industry, gross ticket sales for the top 100 tours in North America reached $1.7 billion for the first six months of 2022, up 9 percent from the same period in 2019. Live Nation, the global concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, recently reported that the company had already sold 100 million tickets for the full year, more than in 2019. Still, the tightening of the wider economy has many in the industry worried about the rest of the year.On the road, and in venues packed with unmasked fans, the threat of Covid-19 still lingers, leading to occasional postponements and cancellations. A residency plan can limit the risk of exposure, and also give an artist a temporary break from the rigors of the road. In one recent Instagram post from a tour stop in Germany, Styles showed himself collapsed in an ice bath. (Styles and his representatives declined to comment for this article.)Adele will begin a 32-date weekend engagement at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in November.Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for AdeleThe complications of touring in the age of Covid-19 were behind Maná’s decision to limit its U.S. shows to the Forum. Last year, as the group began making its plans for 2022, the rise of the Omicron variant, and the tangle of local health regulations across the country, made a nationwide tour seem daunting.So they decided to stick to one spot in the Los Angeles area, the group’s biggest worldwide market. The band has already played eight sold-out shows at the Forum, drawing 110,000 fans, and has four more announced through October.“We just wanted to get out and play, to be with our fans,” said Fher Olvera, Maná’s lead singer. “We thought doing a whole tour would be really challenging, maybe impossible, given all the variables.”“After everything that’s happened over the last few years,” Olvera added, “the residency is more than a series of concerts for us — it’s a celebration of life.”The origins of the contemporary concert residency go back to Celine Dion’s decision to set up in Las Vegas in 2003, a time when that city was still seen as a pasture for fading acts.“It was a very big risk at the time — everybody thought we were fools,” said John Meglen of Concerts West, Dion’s promoter, which is part of the AEG Live empire. “At the time, Vegas was like the end of your career. It was like, ‘Come die with us.’”But Dion’s two residencies sold about $660 million in tickets to more than 1,100 shows, according to Pollstar. Dion’s engagements, as well as two by Elton John, recalibrated the industry’s approach to Las Vegas, and were followed by residencies there with Garth Brooks, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Drake and many others.The crucial artist for expanding the residency outside of Las Vegas, however, was Billy Joel. After being named the Garden’s first “music franchise” in late 2013, Joel began playing there monthly in 2014, and, aside from a hiatus during the pandemic, never stopped; his 86th concert in the series was recently announced for Dec. 19.Through his June show, the Garden residency has sold about $180 million in tickets. If the rest of his concerts there this year sell out — a fair bet, since every other night of the residency has — the cumulative gross will be around $200 million.“It’s basically the Super Bowl of music events,” said Dennis Arfa, Joel’s longtime booking agent. Joel has said he would continue the engagement “as long as the demand continues,” and there is no sign of that letting up.For Arfa, the scale of engagements like Joel’s and Dion’s raises a question of nomenclature. Do 15 shows over a few weeks count as a “residency” compared to 86, or to 1,100? If not, then what is it?“The word residency is kind of undefinable,” Arfa said. “Now everything is a residency. People do four nights and they can call it a residency. It’s a matter of verbiage and perception. I think the accomplishment is more important than the title.”Whatever these are, they are likely to continue. Omar Al-joulani, Live Nation’s president of touring, said he expected around 30 residency-type engagements in 2023. “That’s including a big Vegas year.”But talent agents and music executives say that these kinds of events cannot replace full-scale touring as a way to satisfy demand and cultivate audiences. When Styles announced his tour dates, Nathan Hubbard, a longtime ticketing executive who is the former chief executive of Ticketmaster, on Twitter declared the strategy “the future of live.” But in a recent interview, he took a more nuanced view.“This is not the new touring model,” Hubbard said. “This doesn’t mean nobody’s going to Louisville — indeed, most artists are still going to have to go market to market to hustle it.”And when a major venue announces its next block booking, what do we call it? Is it a residency, or something else? Arfa, Joel’s agent, pointed to Styles’s dates at the Garden.“It’s a run,” he said. “It’s a great run.” More
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Kate Bush Rides ‘Stranger Things’ to a New High on the Singles Chart
“Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” hit No. 4 on the U.S. singles chart this week, 37 years after its release. Harry Styles’s “As It Was” is still No. 1.Thirty-seven years ago, the British singer-songwriter Kate Bush released the song “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” as part of her album “Hounds of Love.” The single went to No. 3 in Britain and No. 30 in the United States, and took its place as a signature piece of Bush’s catalog — an intense ballad with a driving beat, a playful synthesizer melody and Bush’s dramatic vocals.Then came “Stranger Things.”After “Running Up That Hill” was featured prominently in the latest season of “Stranger Things,” the 1980s-period horror-drama on Netflix, the song began to climb the charts again, posting huge numbers on streaming services and catching fire on TikTok. It has now reached No. 2 in Britain — held off only by Harry Styles’s “As It Was” — and this week climbed four spots to reach No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, the standard U.S. pop singles chart, Bush’s highest position ever. It was Spotify’s most streamed track throughout the world last week, with 57.2 million clicks (about a million more than “As It Was”), and is showing no signs of slowing down.While “Running Up that Hill” has been big on streaming services, radio stations have been slow to play it, giving Styles an advantage when it comes to the Billboard chart. “As It Was” holds at No. 1 on the Hot 100 — which is computed from a song’s success in streaming, sales and airplay — for a sixth week.“Running Up That Hill” is the latest example of a decades-old song finding surprising success. In 2020, Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” became a streaming hit after an Idaho potato worker made a TikTok video of himself listening to it while drinking Cran-Raspberry juice. And this year, Nirvana’s 31-year-old “Something in the Way” made its first appearance on the Hot 100 after the song was used in “The Batman.”In a note on her website, Bush, who rarely gives interviews, wrote, “How utterly brilliant!” in response to the song’s chart success. “So many young people who love the show, discovering the song for the first time.” She added:The response to “Running Up That Hill” is something that has had its own energy and volition. A direct relationship between the shows and their audience and one that has stood completely outside of the music business. We’ve all been astounded to watch the track explode!On this week’s album chart, the Puerto Rican reggaeton star Bad Bunny jumps one spot to claim his second week at No. 1 with “Un Verano Sin Ti,” beating out Post Malone’s new “Twelve Carat Toothache,” which opens at No. 2 with the equivalent of 121,000 sales, including 128 million streams. Styles’s “Harry’s House,” the top seller for the last two weeks, fell to No. 3. Future’s “I Never Liked You” is No. 4, and Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” is in fifth place. More
