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      Phil Donahue, Daytime Talk Show Host, Dies at 88

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      Phil Donahue, who in the 1960s reinvented the television talk show with a democratic flourish, inviting audiences to question his guests on topics as resolutely high-minded as human rights and international relations, and as unblushingly lowbrow as male strippers and safe-sex orgies, died on Sunday at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 88.His death was confirmed by Susan Arons, a representative of the family.“The Phil Donahue Show” made its debut in 1967 on WLWD-TV in Dayton, Ohio, propelling Mr. Donahue on a 29-year syndicated run, much of it as the unchallenged king of daytime talk television.Almost from the start, “The Phil Donahue Show” dispensed with familiar trappings. There was no opening monologue, no couch, no sidekick, no band — just the host and the guests, focused on a single topic.At the time, audiences were expected to be seen and not heard, unless prompted to applaud. Mr. Donahue changed that. He quickly realized from chatting with audience members during commercial breaks that some of them asked sharper questions than he did. And so he began his practice of stalking the aisles, microphone in hand, and letting those in the seats have their say. He also opened the telephone lines to those watching at home. Electronic democracy, as some called it, had arrived.Few subjects, if any, were off limits for Mr. Donahue, who was said to have told his staff, “I want all the topics hot.” It mattered little that at times the subjects made some viewers, and local station managers, squirm. His very first guest was guaranteed to stir controversy: Madalyn Murray O’Hair, at the time America’s most famous, and widely unpopular, atheist.Mr. Donahue’s very first guest was Madalyn Murray O’Hair, at the time America’s most famous, and widely unpopular, atheist.via Everett CollectionWe 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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      Alan Cumming on ‘Chimp Crazy’: ‘I Really Do Understand the Deep Love’

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      A documentary series by a director of “Tiger King” tells a wild tale about human-chimp relationships. The actor and activist landed right in the middle.In 1997, Alan Cumming appeared in the film “Buddy,” playing an animal handler hired by an eccentric socialite (Rene Russo) who maintained a menagerie in her Long Island home. One of his co-stars was Tonka, a male chimpanzee on the cusp of adolescence. Cumming felt a special bond with Tonka.“He was very gentle,” Cumming, 59, said during a recent video call. “When the other chimps would get a little overwrought, he was a calming influence, a mediator.”Soon after filming ended, Tonka retired. (Once chimps go through puberty, they are considered potentially too strong and sexually aggressive to work on camera.) In 2017, Cumming, a supporter of the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and a longtime vegan — “I thought if Mike Tyson could do it, I could do it,” he said — learned that Tonka was being held in substandard conditions at a former breeding facility in Festus, Mo.What happened next is the principal subject of the HBO series “Chimp Crazy,” which premiered on Sunday, a wild and occasionally woolly four-part documentary from Eric Goode, a director of “Tiger King.” (The three remaining episodes will air weekly.)PETA secured the release of six chimpanzees from the facility in 2021. Tonka was not among them. Eventually, PETA offered a $10,000 reward for news of Tonka’s whereabouts. Cumming matched that amount.While the twisty four episodes tell several fraught and often violent stories of chimp-human interactions, its permed, lip-plumped focus is Tonia Haddix, the owner of the Festus animals, including Tonka, and an exotic animal broker who describes herself as the “Dolly Parton of chimps.” (Given the reputation of “Tiger King” as a series that exposed animal mistreatment, Goode approached her through a proxy, a former circus clown who posed as the series’s director.) Cumming claims to feel sympathy for the women Goode turns his cameras on, even as they failed the animals in their care.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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      I ❤️ a Hate-Watch. Don’t You?

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      When it premiered in 2017, I quite liked “The Bold Type,” a television series about three 20-something women working at a fictional magazine called Scarlet. Although the show could tend toward after-school special, with the characters learning important lessons about speaking your truth, facing your sexuality or getting regular gynecological examinations, its heartwarming conventions — young women living their editorial dreams in the big city — worked their magic on me.My love began to curdle during the third season. That’s when a new guy is brought into the office to spearhead Scarlet’s weirdly late foray into online publishing (it was set roughly in 2019). For reasons I couldn’t fathom, he referred to the magazine’s website as “The Dot Com.” Over and over and over again.To someone who’s spent her career in digital media, this was a bridge too far. It suggested that the show’s writers hadn’t ever worked in this world, hadn’t talked to anyone who did, maybe had never read a magazine. My annoyance grew in the fourth season, as the star columnist (a fount of bad ideas) got “her own vertical,” by which the show meant “a blog.” What was going on?I found myself declaiming to friends and colleagues about how deranged this turn of events was. I kept watching, but only to get annoyed at the things that I used to excuse as creative license: plot holes, improbable couplings, messed-up New York City geography. What I’d once enjoyed, I now hate-watched.Hate-watching is a weird thing. There is so much to see, do, hear, read: Why spend precious time, in an age of nearly infinite media, plopped in front of a bad show to pick it apart? It’s like gorging yourself on a disgusting meal not because you’re hungry, but because you want to gripe about it later. Or taking a vacation with someone you find excruciating, not because you don’t have any actual friends, but because you want to bellyache afterward about all the stupid things they said and did.Yet hate-watching is now part of the cultural conversation and arguably contemporary life. Chalk it up to morbid curiosity: We start watching a show because it looks appealing, but we keep watching because we want to complain about it at happy hour. It’s fun to be the person who describes a particularly terrible story arc or performance to our friends’ disbelief. Besides, it’s better than whatever is on the news.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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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Anonymous’ and the Democratic National Convention

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      A new competition show airs on USA and Bravo. And Kamala Harris will be officially nominated as the party’s candidate across networks.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, Aug. 19-25. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION starting at 6:30 p.m. on various networks. On July 21, President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. By Aug. 6, Vice President Kamala Harris secured the Democratic Party’s nomination, making her the first woman of color to win a major party’s nomination. Through Thursday, the Democratic National Convention will take place in Chicago, culminating in Harris becoming the party’s official nominee — just in time for the first debate between her and former President Donald J. Trump on Sept. 10.THE ANONYMOUS 11 p.m. on Bravo, USA and Syfy. This new competition show involves two universes — the real world and an anonymous one. In the anonymous world, players say and do what they think will get them farther in the game, but under a cloak of anonymity. Each week, players try to guess who each person is in the real world, all in an attempt to win the $100,000 prize.TuesdayFrom left: Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins “The Shawshank Redemption.”Columbia Pictures, via PhotofestTHE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994) 8 p.m. on AMC. Based on a Stephen King novella, this movie stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne, a man sent to prison after the murder of his wife and her lover. Dufresne maintains his innocence and forms a bond with Morgan Freeman’s character, Red. “Without a single riot scene or horrific effect, it tells a slow, gentle story of camaraderie and growth, with an ending that abruptly finds poetic justice in what has come before,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review for The New York Times.WednesdayMOULIN ROUGE (1952) 8 p.m. on TCM. These days, when “Moulin Rouge” comes to mind, you likely think of the flashy Baz Luhrmann remake with Nicole Kidman’s gaudy elephant suite. But before that, there was this version, which is more of a biopic of the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted the famous scenes from the Moulin Rouge in Paris. “From the fairly intoxicating opening, with dancers swirling in the smoky haze and the overcrowded climate of the wine-colored Moulin Rouge, to the last poignant sequence wherein Lautrec sees these same dancers ghosting through the rooms of his family’s château near Albi as he lies on his painful deathbed, the exquisiteness of the illustration is superlative and complete,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The Times.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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      Perry Kurtz, Comedian Who Appeared on ‘America’s Got Talent,’ Dies at 73

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      Mr. Kurtz, who was killed in a hit-and-run on Thursday, honed his routine over decades and eventually became a recognizable face at comedy institutions.Perry Kurtz, who worked stand-up comedy circuits for decades and appeared on “America’s Got Talent” and “The Late Late Show With James Corden,” died on Thursday night in a hit-and-run in Los Angeles. He was 73.A daughter, Zelda Velazquez, confirmed his death. Mr. Kurtz was crossing Ventura Boulevard when he was struck by a car, according to the authorities. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and the driver was later arrested.Mr. Kurtz was a familiar face in long-established comedy halls, such as the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, but rose to prominence on the national stage with an appearance on “America’s Got Talent” in 2013 in which he performed a rap wearing a silver suit that gleamed like a disco ball.The performance did not go over well with the judges, who eliminated him from the competition, but it fit a campy persona that Mr. Kurtz embraced.On “The Late Late Show With James Corden” in 2018, Mr. Kurtz walked onstage wearing thick suspenders and a Hawaiian shirt, a keytar hanging around his neck. He proceeded to play “Louie Louie,” made famous by the Kingsmen, using his tongue.“In 1979 I moved to San Francisco to pursue my dream,” Mr. Kurtz said in a 2022 interview with Shoutout LA. “Since then, the only job I’ve had is making people laugh.”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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      Rob Rausch and Aaron Evans Talk ‘Love Island’ Bromance

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      The “bromance” between Rob Rausch and Aaron Evans has helped make this season a hit. We talk to the pair about their special bond.The premise of “Love Island” is simple — put a bunch of attractive people on a remote island in Fiji where they have no communication with the outside world, are filmed 24/7 and endure silly (and often gross) challenges with the ultimate goal of coupling up with another islander.Like many dating shows, “Love Island” (which now has U.S., U.K. and Australia versions, among many others) doesn’t actually yield that many enduring romances. Instead, the friendships that form can often define the show. The bromance playing out between Aaron Evans and Rob Rausch on the current season of “Love Island U.S.A.” is a prime example.From left: Evans, Kaylor Martin and Rausch on “Love Island USA.”Ben Symons/PeacockViewers have seen both of them pursue romantic relationships — Evans with Kaylor Martin and Rausch with a handful of different islanders. But just as often as they were schmoozing and canoodling with women, they were sitting at the end of the villa’s dock shedding tears, laughing or talking about their feelings. This set off a range of comments online — some viewers celebrated their friendship with TikTok edits of their best moments, while others implied (or said outright) that they both wanted to be more than friends. Their displays of affection were startling to some viewers, as male friendships on TV are rarely cast in that light. The pair’s bond has been one of the major reasons this season of “Love Island” has become a breakout hit, topping most-watched charts during its summer run and finally matching up to the original U.K. version in the eyes of many fans. Over a Zoom call — where Evans was in a lodge in Britain that was shaking thanks to a rambunctious washing machine and a shirtless Rausch was in and out of bed in a house in Los Angeles — we discussed the response to their friendship and the portrayal of men’s vulnerability onscreen.When Evans (from the coastal area of southwest England) and Rausch (a self-described “snake wrangler” from Alabama) met, it was not friendship at first sight. They bonded when Evans offered Rausch a cigarette, but Rausch thought that Evans was too wild.

      @loveislandusa Brotherhood has kept these two afloat. Bye for now, Dock! #LoveIslandUSA @Robert Rausch @Aaron.evans ♬ original sound – Love Island USA 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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      Richard Kind Is Still Waiting for His Big Break

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      In a scene from the most recent season of the Netflix series “Girls5eva,” the character actor Richard Kind appears as a sort of guardian angel for one of the heroines, a member of a pop girl group. His advice to her: Don’t try to make it big. The middle is where you want to be.“I’ve spent the past 40 years striking the perfect balance between constantly working and never getting bugged in a deli,” he says.That’s not exactly true. During a recent lunch — not at a deli but rather at an upscale Mediterranean restaurant on the Upper West Side — a woman walked up and recalled something she had seen him in (a play in the Hamptons; she didn’t remember which one) and asked what he was doing next. He told her he was in the coming season of the Hulu mystery comedy “Only Murders in the Building.”He said this kind of thing happened all the time. Beloved by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Kind himself is down-to-earth and approachable. Sitting at a table trying to scoop the last bit of fruit out of his raspberry lemonade, he could have been any other hard-working New Yorker who would never let a quality bite go to waste. But his face, with its hangdog expressions, and his aggressively nasal voice were unmistakable.Richard Kind said he was told by an early acting teacher, “‘Hollywood doesn’t want you — you’re not a pretty face.’” Now he has close to 300 acting credits on IMDb.Danielle Amy for The New York TimesPut another way, he is a consummate Everyman who is also, if you can pardon the expression, one of a kind. He specializes the kinds of dads or colleagues many of us know well — boisterous, sometimes desperate men who are quick to anger and even quicker to flop-sweat. Offscreen, he has a workaday approach to his job that belies the glamour of his profession, and he talks often about the hardships of being a working actor even though he is constantly on television.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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      Late Night Tackles Trump’s Tic Tac Show and Tell

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      “That is not an example of inflation; it’s just two different sizes of breath mints,” Desi Lydic said on Thursday’s “The Daily Show.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Tic Tac TacticsDuring a campaign rally on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump held up two boxes of Tic Tacs, one smaller than the other, in an attempt to demonstrate inflation.“That is not an example of inflation; it’s just two different sizes of breath mints,” Desi Lydic said on Thursday’s “The Daily Show.”“I mean, my understanding of macroeconomics is limited, but I do know for a [expletive] fact that inflation is not defined as ‘big Tic Tac, little Tic Tac.’” — DESI LYDIC“And, by the way, Donald, if someone hands you a breath mint, they’re not suggesting you talk about inflation; they’re suggesting you take a breath mint.” — DESI LYDIC“Then Trump said, ‘And it’s very sad that China is spying on us through Tic Tac.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Off Message Edition)“Trump has reportedly been rattled and disoriented by Harris’s surge, and now he’s struggling to adjust and stay on message — mainly because he has no message.” — SETH MEYERS“Look, I hate to nitpick, but in this speech about the economy, do you think at any point you want to say something about the economy?” — DESI LYDIC“First of all, it is incredibly troubling that he thinks Tic Tacs are groceries. Second, people say Trump is an entertainer, and it’s true — what’s more entertaining than watching a 78-year-old man fumble around inside his coat pocket for a container of tiny Tic Tacs? He’s like a drunk magician at a 5-year-old’s birthday.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingThe pop superstar Billie Eilish took The Colbert Questionert on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutGena Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence,” one of her many collaborations with her husband, the director, writer and actor John Cassavetes.Faces InternationalWith her inspired performances in films like “A Woman Under the Influence” and “Broken English,” Gena Rowlands was widely regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation. More