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      The Onscreen Apartments That Made Them Want to Live in New York

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      Twelve designers, architects and others reflect on the movie and TV homes, from SoHo lofts to houses on the park, that inspired them to move to the city, and informed their aesthetics.Moving to New York is almost always a decision informed partly by fantasy. It’s impossible to escape the fictional versions of the city that proliferate in books, art, music — and, perhaps most vividly, in movies and television shows, with their typically romantic (and typically misleading) depictions of rent-stabilized studios and affordable brownstones. To coincide with T’s New York-themed home-design issue, we asked a handful of designers, architects and other creative people about the film and TV interiors that shaped their vision of the city they now call home.John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow in the 1968 film “Rosemary’s Baby.”Paramount Pictures/Getty ImagesToshiko Mori, architect: “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)Moved to New York in the late 1960sI came to New York from Japan with my family to attend high school. One of my first assignments at the summer school I attended that year was to write an essay comparing the 1967 novel “Rosemary’s Baby” by Ira Levin with the film adaptation by Roman Polanski. The building in the movie is called the Bramford, but the exteriors, famously, were those of the Dakota on the Upper West Side. What struck me about the movie’s apartments was their aspect of interiority — the way they seemed to harbor secrets. I also remember their small, framed views of high-rise New York City buildings. Even though the film is, of course, a horror story and the building turns out to be cursed, “Rosemary’s Baby” only made me more excited about living in New York. Coming from Japan, I was used to stories about ghosts and evil spirits. So in an absurd way, it made the city feel more familiar.Jean Arthur in the 1937 film “Easy Living.”© Paramount Pictures/PhotofestJohn Derian, 60, designer and retailer: “Easy Living” (1937)Moved to New York in 1992I was a child who on Saturdays watched every old movie on TV: the 12 o’clock, the two o’clock, the four o’clock and, if I could get away with it, the six o’clock. One of my favorites was the screwball comedy “Easy Living,” starring Jean Arthur. The movie takes you all over New York through multiple dwellings, from a mansion on Fifth Avenue to a little room in a boardinghouse where Arthur’s character lives for seven dollars a week, culminating in an over-the-top Hollywood Regency-style suite at the fictional Hotel Louis with sky-high ceilings, a grand piano and an ornate plunge tub. “Wow,” I thought. “All this in one city? Sign me up!” I still love the smoke and mirrors of a good set, and I’m basically doing the same thing today in my shops, creating a little fantasy.Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger in the 1989 film “Batman.”© Warner Bros./PhotofestStephen Alesch, 57, designer: “Batman” (1989)Moved to New York in 1994Growing up in Milwaukee and later in the Los Angeles area, I loved Batman comics. When Tim Burton’s “Batman” came out, I ate it up. The Gotham of the film was Manhattan exaggerated, and the neo-neo gothic sets blew me away. I loved the shadowy wet streets, the balconies up high in the mist, the buttresses and water towers. One interior that particularly struck me was Vicky Vale’s (Kim Basinger’s) penthouse, with its shiny tile walls and sweeping steel arch covered in rivets. During my first stay in New York in 1991, I couch surfed with friends and walked the streets for hours, taking in the Chrysler Building, Tudor City, the fire escapes of the Lower East Side. I couldn’t help seeing the city through a noirish lens. Within a few years I moved to New York for good, and I still push for rivets on projects and try to add a vaulted buttress wherever I see an opportunity.Tracy Camilla Johns in the 1986 film “She’s Gotta Have It.”© Island PicturesLoren Daye, 48, interior designer: “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986)Moved to New York in 1996I was 21 and living in Chicago when I first saw “She’s Gotta Have It.” Much of the film takes place in Fort Greene, but the protagonist, Nola Darling (played by Tracy Camilla Johns), lives in a semi-empty loft in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, among scrap pieces of wood, buckets of paint and her collages. The loft is painted almost completely white and has incredible arched windows and geometric light fixtures suspended from the ceiling, the whole space anchored by her bed at the very center. The bed has a latticed headboard where she lights dozens of candles every evening — it’s like a shrine to her sexuality. That room was my dream, representing freedom, honesty and self-realization. A year after I saw the movie, I arrived in New York. In 2003 I finally found a place in Fort Greene and I’m still here.Geraldine Page in the 1978 film “Interiors.”© United Artists/PhotofestBilly Cotton, 42, interior designer: “Interiors” (1978)Moved to New York in 2000When I moved to New York to study Russian history at Hunter College I had no inkling I would become a designer. But I do remember watching Woody Allen’s “Interiors” — I think my parents had the VHS cassette — when I was a kid in Burlington, Vt. The matriarch of the story is Eve, an interior designer played by Geraldine Page, and the film’s rambling, sparsely furnished apartments formed my idea of an extremely glamorous New York. Now, looking back at the movie’s spare, monochromatic interiors, I feel like they’re oddly prescient of the current trend for entirely beige, cream and white spaces. But they’re also sort of timeless. This city throws so much visual energy at you on a daily basis, and I love the idea of having just a couple good things you can take with you from place to place.Catherine Deneuve in the 1983 film “The Hunger.”© MGM/UA/PhotofestTal Schori, 43, architect: “The Hunger” (1983)Moved to New York in 2003I grew up in the New York suburbs in the 1990s and the city always held a somewhat intimidating allure for me. This was epitomized in the noirish vampire movie “The Hunger,” which I first saw as a teenager. David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve play the undead lovers John and Miriam Blaylock, who live in a luxurious prewar townhouse near Central Park. Dramatically lit through sheer curtains, the house, with its high ceilings, elegant French doors, paneled walls, ornate moldings and opulent stone cladding, exuded a certain languid luxury and dark transgressiveness. I was seduced. By 2003, I had arrived in New York, renting a modest one-bedroom in a 1960s brick co-op in Ditmas Park.“Hey Arnold!” (1996-2004).© Nickelodeon/PhotofestJared Blake, 33, furniture designer and retailer: “Hey Arnold!” (1996-2004)Moved to New York in 2005To me, Arnold’s room in the Nickelodeon series “Hey Arnold!” is legendary. The show is set in a fictional city called Hillwood, but there’s no doubt in my mind it’s modeled on New York. Arnold had a Murphy bed, a skylight, track lighting, a giant water dispenser and a funky red rug kind of like the one in “The Shining” (1980), but more mod. I was born in New Jersey and moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when I was 7, but I visited New York four times a year to see my dad, who lived in Harlem. I think I knew early on that the city was where I was meant to end up. It’s been 16 years since I arrived, and I’m realizing now that I may have subconsciously created my version of Arnold’s room in my apartment in Ridgewood, Queens. I have a Murphy bed and track lighting, and the whole vibe, like Arnold’s, is very eclectic. I’m just missing the skylight.Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger in the 1986 film “9½ Weeks.”© MGM/PhotofestFarrah Sit, 41, furniture designer: “9½ Weeks” (1986)Moved to New York in 2005I grew up in Kingston, N.Y., just two hours away, and when I was a kid, the sensory overload of New York City — the noise, the stink, the heat — was intense for me. So the interiors in “9 ½ Weeks” were a revelation: an expression of austere minimalism and an aspiring art school kid’s dream. Elizabeth’s art gallery loft was a light-filled box that seemed to float above the chaos of the city. John’s monochromatic, museumlike penthouse, with its furniture by Marcel Breuer and Richard Meier, was luxurious and restrained. These spaces played with light, shadow and texture, expressing an aesthetic that resonates with me to this day. After 18 years living in New York, I still respond to the intensity of the city by creating a feeling of serenity in my work.Meryl Streep and Jeff Daniels in the 2002 film “The Hours.”Meryl Streep and Jeff Daniels in the 2002 film “The Hours.”Fabiana Faria, 37, retailer: “The Hours” (2002)Moved to New York in 2007Meryl Streep character’s in “The Hours,” Clarissa Vaughan, lives in a rustic, rambling, flower-filled home in downtown New York where she often hosts parties. I first saw the movie when I was 14 and living with my parents in Caracas, Venezuela. I wanted to believe that one day I would have a home in New York like that where I would host gatherings of interesting people and be able to walk everywhere, dropping by the butcher or the florist, who both knew me. There are several scenes in Clarissa’s wonderful open kitchen, which has a big stove, hanging pots and wood floors. When I moved to the city I had no illusions of living in such luxury — I shared a two-bedroom with three other roommates on Roosevelt Island — but I held on to that vision of a warm, lived-in, well-loved New York apartment.Parker Posey in the 1995 film “Party Girl.”© First Look Pictures/PhotofestLuam Melake, 36, furniture designer: “Party Girl” (1995)Moved to New York in 2011When I first saw “Party Girl,” I was 22 and living in San Francisco. Posey’s character, an aspiring librarian who prioritizes fashion and parties, struck me as a shinier reflection of my life as a clothing-obsessed pseudo-librarian — I worked at a bookstore — who earned a living basically just to dress up and hang out. Posey’s character lives in a dingy loft in Chinatown that mainly houses her wardrobe and record collection. It’s a flexible space that she transforms for each party. When I was 24, I moved to New York with just my books and clothes and lived in a series of odd spaces around Chinatown. I was always out — and absolutely thrilled to be here. I’m still a fashion-forward librarian now, at Parsons, and I make flexible furniture designed for better social interactions. I spend less time at parties and more time imagining them.Jeffrey Wright in the 1996 film “Basquiat.”© Miramax/PhotofestMinjae Kim, 34, artist and designer: “Basquiat” (1996)Moved to New York in 2015I was in high school in Korea when I first saw the artist Julian Schnabel’s “Basquiat,” a movie about navigating the New York art scene that feels more and more authentic to me as time goes by. I was struck by Basquiat’s East Village apartment, covered wall to wall with his own work, and by the loft apartment of the fictional artist Albert Milo (played by Gary Oldman), where art handlers carried around paintings big enough to be theater backdrops. I was captivated by the romance of living among one’s own work, in a space oriented around the creation of art. The film was inevitably a reference for me when I moved from Seoul to Spanish Harlem and even again last year, when I moved to Bed-Stuy, into my first apartment by myself.An apartment set for “Friends” (1994-2004).©NBC/PhotofestEny Lee Parker, 34, furniture designer: “Friends” (1994-2004)Moved to New York in 2018I grew up in Brazil and, like many middle-school-aged millennials around the world, I religiously watched “Friends” to learn English. The décor of the apartments — the purple walls in Monica’s apartment, the La-Z-Boy chairs in Joey and Chandler’s — didn’t exactly provoke design envy. But I loved how the spaces were a safe, warm environment for these six friends to be themselves. I moved to Williamsburg after grad school, and funnily enough, it was much like “Friends.” Me, my then-husband, my best friend and her then-boyfriend shared a unicorn of an apartment: a rent-controlled three-bedroom, three-bathroom with a private rooftop. We hung out, ate our meals together and threw a few parties. I still love the idea of having friends over, ordering Chinese food and sitting around the coffee table while we eat from takeout containers. More

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      ‘Billions’ Season 7, Episode 7 Recap: The Way of the Ocean

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      Philip gets a hard lesson from the coldblooded sharks around him about the laws of nature.Season 7, Episode 7: ‘DMV’Well, that was a nasty bit of business.One of the best episodes of “Billions” in recent memory, “DMV” — named after the government agency turned into an unlikely bed of low-stakes graft and influence-peddling by the Rhoades family — shows the depths to which many of the show’s leading players will sink to get what they want. Even if their desires are relatively high-minded, the depths remain the same.Philip gets a turn in the spotlight this week when he reels in Prince Cap’s latest whale: bioengineered, self-repairing concrete, invented by one of his mentors in college, Dr. Mike Rulov (Timothy Busfield). Thrilled by the benefits such a material would present for America’s crumbling infrastructure, to say nothing of how rich it would make them all, Philip pitches the idea to Prince, who loves it.A little too much, unfortunately. It’s such a great invention, with such potential for positive change in the world, that Mike insists on owning it lock, stock and barrel. If Rulov demurs, Prince is prepared to snap up related projects and sue Rulov for infringement, a practice called “patent sharking.”Though stunned at Prince’s “blitzkrieg” tactics, Philip tries to play good cop. With the legal and financial resources of one of the smaller G7 nations, Prince would make the new concrete a bigger deal than Rulov could, even with his own high-rollers backing him. But there was clearly no chance of such a sale, even before Prince started making veiled threats. Rulov is simply not the kind of person willing to sell off something into which he has poured so much of himself.When Philip dutifully relays this information to Prince, it only provides the billionaire with more ammo. If Rulov cares about the concrete so much, Prince reasons, then tying it up in litigation for years will force him to sell because of his simple but irresistible desire to see his creation out in the world. Not that Mike is in any hurry for that to happen, even if he wins the fight: At the suggestion of the increasingly sinister Kate Sacker, he considers keeping the technology under wraps until he can roll it out as part of his 2028 re-election campaign. Such is the transactional nature of Mike’s do-gooding at this point.Desperate, Philip turns to Wendy — not for her advice, although that’s the front he puts up, but rather for her connection to Chuck. He knows that if he tells her the whole story, she will reach out to her ex, who will see an opportunity to stick it to Prince.But Philip’s hope that Chuck can shut down the entire patent-sharking sector is a pipe dream. All Chuck can do is have a friend at the Defense Department classify the patent as a matter of national security, seize Rulov’s efforts, and prevent either man from being the sole controller of such an important invention. Of course, the government will most likely sit on it forever, benefiting no one. But if that’s what it takes to stop Prince from getting his hands on this potential game-changer, so be it.Even after this debacle, Philip still wants nothing to do with the plot against Prince, the existence of which Wendy intimates to him after many a knowing glance between herself and Taylor. Philip storms out of her office, all but yelling, “Deniability! Deniability!” with his fingers in his ears.Two parallel story lines echo these abuses of power. In one, Charles Sr. and his grandson, Kevin, are arrested when Charles attempts to bribe a Department of Motor Vehicles employee (Patrick Fischler) into giving Kevin a passing grade on his driver’s test. Chuck throws his weight around, cuts a sweetheart deal with the district attorney, lands the outraged DMV employee a promotion and joins Wendy at Kevin’s next test in his father’s place. Everyone wins, except anyone who thinks we’re all equal in the eyes of the law.Meanwhile, after the disastrous “truth-telling sessions” that saw the Prince Cap foot soldiers tear their boss to shreds, they express discomfort with the idea of Mike conducting the annual performance reviews. But it doesn’t stop there. Banding together, they elect Victor and Rian to tell the committee Mike assembles to take his place — Wags, Scooter, Taylor and Philip — that they reject the committee’s authority to conduct the reviews. They pitch postponing them for a year and detaching their annual comp from the review process in the meantime. Mike caves and even throws them a gala casino night as a morale-building exercise.Or so it seems. In reality, he and Scooter have colluded to have the whole evening recorded, employing the real-life poker ace Vanessa Selbst to analyze their behavior and risk patterns — a performance review without the consent of the performers. Judging from Victor’s and Rian’s reactions, this has exactly the effect on morale you would expect it to.But here’s the thing, as Chuck explains to Philip: In this world, there are harbor seals, like Rulov, and there are sharks, like Prince. Whether it’s running a promising start-up out of business in order to seize it for himself, or making an end-run around his staff’s expressed desires just because he can, Prince will go in for the kill. “Sharks will shark,” Chuck says ruefully. “Harbor seals will harbor seal. That is the way of the ocean.” At this point, everyone’s out in the deep water, watching President Prince’s dorsal fin get closer and closer.Loose changeCharles Sr. gets the biggest laugh lines of the night, twice over. First there’s the precise way he chooses to express his righteous indignation upon being arrested: “This is ridiculous! I was social friends with Robert Moses!” (Charles either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that Moses’s reputational stock has somewhat fallen since their last soirée.)Then there’s the deft way Charles gets Chuck to focus on his own parental neglect in failing to take Kevin to the test — rather than on Charles’s own literally criminal behavior. “Who’s the [expletive] now?” he asks before repeating it more slowly for emphasis: “Who’s … the [expletive] … now?” Chuck’s teary-eyed failure to recognize just how ridiculous this is shows how effective a manipulator Charles remains.What a delight to see Fischler, an actor who in years past cemented his status as one of the screen’s most memorable actors in the space of just two scenes. “Mad Men” viewers will recall his turn as the insult comic Jimmy Barrett, whose dressing down of Don Draper for sleeping with his wife — “You’re garbage, and you know it” — all but flays off the ad man’s skin. Meanwhile, David Lynch fans, or anyone familiar with a “scariest scenes of all time” listicle, know him as the man from the “Winkie’s dream” sequence in “Mulholland Drive,” in which his portrayal of a man facing his worst nightmare is as convincing as it is unnerving.Which members of the Prince Cap Movie Night crew understand that “The Wolf of Wall Street” is intended as a cautionary tale rather than a how-to manual? According to Wags, they are Kate, Victor, and Rian — not that it has stopped any of the three from acting rather wolfish.It’s fun to see the folks on the floor form a sort of pop-up union to collectively fight against the performance reviews. The “Hot Labor Summer” continues, even in “Billions”-land.Normally I’d come down pretty hard on a needle drop as narratively obvious as playing R.E.M.’s “Drive” after a kid passes his driving test, but I’m choosing to believe the song was chosen not for its title but for its somber tone, reflective of the mood of the rest of the episode. Otherwise, “I Can’t Drive 55” by Sammy Hagar was sitting right there. More

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      ‘Sex Education’ Is Back. Here’s What You Need to Know.

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      The raunchy British teen dramedy has been away for two years. Here’s a refresher for the Netflix series’s fourth and final season.School is back in session for the sweet, sometimes absurd British comedy “Sex Education,” which leans heavily into its streaming-series freedom to portray adolescent sex for what it generally is: awkward, mediocre, part of life. Expect close-ups of patchy pubic hair, belly rolls and many (many) penises — among other physical realities of sex that don’t typically appear in teen stories.The show, which won the award for best comedy series at the International Emmy Awards in 2022, centers on Otis (Asa Butterfield), the erudite but romantically floundering son of a sex therapist (Gillian Anderson), who finds that he, too, has a gift for doling out intimate advice — in his case, to his desperately uninformed classmates. Unlike other raunchy teen dramas, like the provocative “Skins” and “Euphoria,” “Sex Education” takes a normalizing, endearingly un-edgy and even occasionally musical approach to the birds and the bees (though the writers would probably choose a more clinical term).In the fourth and final season, now streaming on Netflix, Otis must navigate a new school alongside his effervescent best friend, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa). After the closure of Moordale Secondary School at the end of Season 3, they now face a social hurdle more daunting than trying to become popular: survival as the new kids.But if popularity at Moordale was all about status and appearance, the new school represents something of an alternative educational universe, where learning is student-led, sustainability is cool and gossip is frowned upon.Will Otis and Eric fit in? Will Otis set up a new sex therapy clinic? And where is his broody, wryly sharp love interest Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey)?Two years have passed since the release of Season 3. Here’s a refresher — a little gossip, if you will — as we head into Season 4.What happened to Moordale?After a schoolwide sexually transmitted infection outbreak in Season 2 and an obscene, intergalactic production of “Romeo and Juliet: The Musical,” Moordale Secondary School attracted news attention for its debauchery and earned the nickname “Sex School.” The administration hired a new head teacher, Hope Haddon (Jemima Kirke), to turn things around, but her shame-based approach to discipline and strict dress code couldn’t keep the students from being sexually curious teenagers.As revenge, the student body revolted at a public assembly for Moordale’s investors and the news media, disrupting the program with a screening of a sex-positive student film in which they dressed in genitalia-inspired costumes. Then the audience chanted, “We are Sex School,” and the band performed an explicit song.It was chaotic and symphonic, and it was enough of a ruckus to scare off investors and prospective paying parents. Moordale’s funding was withdrawn, and it closed its doors, forcing its students to find new schools.Where is Maeve?In Season 3, one of the English teachers at Moordale, Ms. Sands (Rakhee Thakrar), gave Maeve, Otis’s crush and sex clinic business partner, a brochure for a gifted and talented program in the United States. Throughout the season, Maeve wavered back and forth on the decision, concerned about the money and leaving her little sister behind.Otis and Maeve’s will-they-won’t-they relationship got some resolution when they finally kissed on a class trip to France. But in the final scene of the season, we learned that Maeve was leaving to study literature at a prestigious American university.The news came as a blow to Otis, who was happy for Maeve’s dream opportunity but devastated to see her go. Maeve promised that her departure didn’t mean that they were over, but she didn’t define the relationship further.Gillian Anderson in the Season 4 premiere of “Sex Education.”Thomas Wood/NetflixIs Jean … OK?Yes … and no. At the end of Season 3 Otis’s mother, Jean, went into labor with dire complications, including hemorrhaging. But she pulled through, and in the season finale, she delivered a healthy baby girl whom she named Joy. Although the pregnancy had a happy ending, the future of the family is a bit fuzzier. In one of the final scenes of the finale, Jean opened a paternity test and her shock revealed that her partner, Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt), might not be the father.Throughout the pregnancy, Jean and Jakob were committed to raising their baby together and forging a robust, if a bit untraditional, family unit with Otis and Ola (Patricia Allison), Jakob’s daughter (who, in a messy set of circumstances, used to date Otis).Will Jean, a careerist rising in her field, continue her sex therapy practice? Will Jakob remain in the picture? And if he isn’t the father, who is?Where do things stand with Eric and Adam?Eric, who is gay and proudly wears eyeliner, colorful nail polish and silky scarves, has had an emotional roller coaster of a relationship with Adam (Connor Swindells), a closeted bully who is new to intimate relationships. They grew closer as Adam learned to accept his sexuality, but Eric struggled to be with someone who couldn’t fully open up, and he eventually kissed another boy on a family trip to Nigeria.Adam eventually forgave the infidelity, but Eric realized he had outgrown the relationship and broke up with him anyway. Heartbroken, Adam began to come to terms with his identity; in the finale, he came out as bisexual to his mother, finally admitting to her that Eric had been his boyfriend. This could be a turning point for the animal-loving gentle giant who always feels like a misfit.Is there still a wide array of experience in Season 4?Somehow the show’s lens has gotten even wider. “Sex Education” is known for its nuanced depictions of gender, sexuality and disability, and for presenting forms of intimacy that are rarely displayed on mainstream television. A progressive new school promises an even more varied student body, with types of relationships not explored in previous seasons. Whether the school lives up to its “good vibes only” reputation remains to be seen.The show celebrates the body — its limitations, its potential, its drive — in its many forms. Whatever Season 4 may bring, it is sure to explore a wide range of teenage lust and physical complexities. More

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      Robert Klane, Writer of ‘Weekend at Bernie’s,’ Dies at 81

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      He also adapted his best-known novel, “Where’s Poppa?,” into the script for a raw Carl Reiner comedy and directed the disco movie “Thank God It’s Friday.”Robert Klane, a comic novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker with a taste for gleeful vulgarity who wrote the screenplay for “Weekend at Bernie’s,” the 1989 cult film about two young insurance company employees who create the illusion that their murdered boss is still alive, died on Aug. 29 at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 81.His son Jon said the cause was kidney failure.Mr. Klane wrote “Weekend at Bernie’s” more than two decades into a career that began with the publication of two humorous novels: “The Horse Is Dead: A Tasteless Novel” (1968) and “Where’s Poppa?” (1970). He adapted “Where’s Poppa?” into the screenplay for a twisted comedy about a single lawyer (played by George Segal) who dreams of scaring to death or institutionalizing his aged, maddening mother (Ruth Gordon).Ted Kotcheff, who directed “Weekend at Bernie’s,” wrote in his 2017 memoir, “Director’s Cut: My Life in Film,” that Mr. Klane had been inspired to write it by his time as an advertising copywriter in the 1960s, when the top executives at one of the agencies where he worked invited employees to their beach houses on Long Island.Mr. Klane with Donna Summer on the set of the 1978 disco film “Thank God It’s Friday,” which he directed. Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images“But he always wondered what would happen if the underlings got a house all to themselves — inmates taking over the asylum,” Mr. Kotcheff wrote.In “Bernie’s,” the young workers (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) discover a $2 million fraud but don’t know that their boss, Bernie (Terry Kiser), is the culprit. Bernie invites them to his beach house, ostensibly as a reward, and asks his mobster partner to kill them. But the mobster tells the hit man to kill Bernie instead for sleeping with his girlfriend.The employees — fearful that they might be next on the hit list — frantically make Bernie seem alive by, among other ruses, putting sunglasses on him, rolling him out to his sun deck and rigging a device that raises his arm so he appears to be waving to people.The film, which grossed a modest $30 million (a little less than $75 million in today’s money), gained fans long after its release through home video and cable-TV viewing. People magazine wrote in 2014 that the movie “has managed to age into something close to respectability.”Mr. Klane believed that the Bernie character was too dead to revive cinematically. But a sequel was made — because Victor Drai, one of the original film’s producers, raised the money from its Italian distributor, Mr. Drai recalled in a phone interview.Mr. Klane was the director as well as the writer of “Weekend at Bernie’s II” (1993), which involves the discovery of Bernie’s offshore bank account, containing the embezzled money, and a voodoo ceremony to try reanimating him.The reviews were roundly negative.“If ever there was a career-ending movie,” the Miami Herald critic Rene Rodriguez wrote, “‘Weekend at Bernie’s II’ is it.”But for Mr. Klane, it wasn’t. He kept working.Robert Klane was born on Oct. 17, 1941, in Port Jefferson, N.Y., on Long Island, and grew up in nearby Patchogue and Bayport. His father, Edward, was a physician. His mother, Adele (Blum) Klane, was a homemaker.After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in English, Mr. Klane returned to New York and found work in advertising.Over the next few years he was a commercial copywriter at two agencies, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (now BBDO) and McCann Erickson (now McCann). In 1967 he went to work at Filmex, a production house, where he directed commercials.In his spare time he wrote “The Horse Is Dead,” about a camp counselor who hates his campers. The book was labeled “filth and smut simply for the sake of smut” by a self-appointed decent literature committee that wanted it removed from a library in Bel Air, Md., in 1968. But commissioners in Harford County, Md., refused to ban it.On the other hand, Jack Benny sent Mr. Klane a fan letter telling him that it was the funniest book he had ever read.Two years later, Mr. Klane published “Where’s Poppa?,” and that same year Carl Reiner directed the film version, with a script by Mr. Klane. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film did not have “much more on its mind than a desperate desire to provoke shock and laughter” — which, he said, it did successfully.Jon Klane recalled going to a theater to see the film with his father, who stayed in the lobby. “I came out to get candy, and he was watching a matronly woman demand a refund,” he said by phone. “I went up to him, and he said, ‘This is exactly the kind of person I want to offend.’”Over the next three decades, Mr. Klane stayed busy in television and film. He wrote six episodes of the sitcom “M*A*S*H”; the 1985 film “National Lampoon’s European Vacation,” with John Hughes; “The Man With One Red Shoe,” a 1985 remake of the French comedy “The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe,” which starred Tom Hanks; and, in 1997, 11 episodes of Tracey Ullman’s sketch comedy series “Tracey Takes On …,” for which he and several others received an Emmy Award for outstanding variety, music or comedy series.His directing work included “Thank God It’s Friday” (1978), set entirely in a disco, which won the Academy Award for best original song, “Last Dance,” sung by the disco diva Donna Summer, one of its stars; and “The Odd Couple: Together Again,” a 1993 TV movie that reunited Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, the stars of that 1970s sitcom.In addition to his son Jon, Mr. Klane is survived by his wife, J.C. Scott; a daughter, Caitlin Klane; another son, David; a brother, Larry; and five grandchildren. Another daughter, Tracy Klane, died in 2011. His marriages to Linda Tesh and the actress Anjanette Comer ended in divorce.About 20 years ago, Mr. Klane worked with his son Jon on a script, set in a ski resort, that would have rebooted the “Bernie’s” franchise. It did not sell.“We wore out the carpet coming up with gags,” Jon Klane said. “It was my best memory of him. He would say, ‘It has to be a laugh a page, Jonny.’” More

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      Don’t Stop Believin’? Considering a TV Golden Age, 10 Years Later

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      “Difficult Men,” Brett Martin’s book about the prestige TV boom, has been rereleased in a 10th-anniversary edition. In an interview, he reflects on how TV has changed since he wrote it.Tony Soprano, Don Draper and Omar Little glower from the cover of “Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution,” Brett Martin’s canon-codifying 2013 book about the prestige TV boom of the 2000s. But as difficult and revolutionary as those fictional antiheroes were, the title just as well describes their brilliant, gnomic, sometimes cruel creators, like David Chase (“The Sopranos”), David Simon (“The Wire”) and Matthew Weiner (“Mad Men”).“Difficult Men,” whose 10th-anniversary edition was published in paperback this summer, is a history of the remarkable moment, starting nearly 25 years ago, when business imperatives and risk-taking executives empowered ornery writers with network experience and chips on their shoulders to create era-defining, artistically lasting programs.One of the book’s through lines was that these shows tended to revolve around men who resembled the way their creators saw themselves: as mavericks taking arms against bureaucratic inertia. It’s a theme that Martin, a New Orleans-based journalist, said he might de-emphasize today in favor of delving into the depth and richness of the characters.“The artistic triumph the original shows allowed,” Martin said earlier this month, “was to create all these real human stories and specific, idiosyncratic characters — which is more important than the easy antihero formulation.”The past decade has seen a societal reckoning with misconduct in the culture industries, including television. Some of the showrunner behavior Martin chronicled in his book — icing out disfavored writers, halting entire productions for petty personal whims, throwing tantrums — looks different now.In a new preface for the anniversary edition, Martin says that were he writing “Difficult Men” now, he would focus more on “the knotty question of how the same men who provided, in many ways, the most astute critiques of toxic male power that mainstream culture had ever seen could nevertheless end up confirming and recapitulating precisely the same dynamics in their own workplaces.”A 10th anniversary edition of “Difficult Men” was released this summer.Even in 2013, Martin held up counterexamples like the showrunners Alan Ball (“Six Feet Under”) and Vince Gilligan (“Breaking Bad”), who ran artistically successful programs while being, by all accounts, nice guys and good bosses.In other respects, 2013 turned out to be a convenient year for a book about this Golden Age of television. It was the year “Breaking Bad” ended and James Gandolfini, the “Sopranos” star, died. And it was the year that “House of Cards,” the first original series commissioned by Netflix, debuted. In a phone interview, Martin discussed why the shows he wrote about still hold up and how the emergence of streaming has affected prestige TV. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Was there one show that provoked you to write the book?It was “The Sopranos,” in both an abstract and a literal sense. I had been hired to write the official coffee table companion during the final season. I maybe outstayed my welcome, treated it like a real reporting job, was there for quite a long time and got a chance to peek behind the scenes. It was a revelation to me: the size of the operation, the ambition, the way people talked about their work — the sense of something very big being made. The number of times I had to explain what a showrunner was back then is, in and of itself, an indicator of what an alien world that was.It’s such a funny term.It just occurs to me what kind of a technical term “showrunner” is, how unromantic. It really is something that, like, the Teamsters would come up with. It’s so literal and so nonartistic: You keep things running. The term betrays the kind of factory mentality that applied to television at the time.Did you think of yourself as establishing a canon?It was very obvious what at least three of the four main shows that I was going to write about were, and most of the peripheral ones as well. In my original proposal, the fourth show was, actually, “Rescue Me” — which is a show whose first few seasons had been perhaps unfairly forgotten but felt very much in keeping with these other shows. It felt extremely daring in being one of the first shows where 9/11 was being treated in a fully rounded way. My first editor pushed me to include “Battlestar Galactica,” but it just really wasn’t my bag. And then “Breaking Bad” asserted itself as the book was being written and became very obviously the ending place. There were the other HBO shows, and “The Shield” was an important step as well, but there weren’t many examples I left out.Have any of the shows in the book not stood up as much as you expected?Quite the opposite: The shows you think might have been dated have proven riveting in ways they maybe weren’t even when they were on. The America of Tony Soprano, the America of Walter White and very much the America of “The Wire” has proved itself to be the dominant America in the past 20 years. “The Sopranos” became this huge pandemic rewatch, and I think it’s because it’s so recognizable: The themes — the rot at the center of America, the grift of American life, the anxiety Tony Soprano has — are all super familiar to us now.Younger generations have adopted “The Sopranos”; it appears in countless memes.It’s great entertainment. It had to be: It had to resemble entertaining network television in many ways. It was still operating as a Trojan horse. It had to be funny and human, and it had to be consumable because the high-art part, the ambition part, was something nobody was looking for.How did the men you wrote about respond to your book?I never heard a word from any of them except for Vince Gilligan, who wrote me a beautiful blurb on the back of the new edition. Not surprisingly, because the book ends making the point that one doesn’t have to be that difficult to create these wonderful shows.Few would be interested in defending some of the behavior you document. But does the fact that it happened during the creation of these really great series make any of it easier to accept?It’s hard for me to see how a lack of empathy for people who work for you is a necessary part of the creative process. I do think people’s feelings could get hurt in a very intense workplace, and I don’t think every hurt feeling is avoidable. But I do think one can maintain a basic level of decency — let alone avoid using your power destructively — and still create quality work. I believe it because I’ve seen the shows that prove it, and because I’m optimistic.There are women characters and characters of color in these shows, but the protagonists and the creators behind them are all white men. Does that taint the legacy of that era?It wasn’t a huge surprise that white men writing about white men dominated the first phase of this new world. But the door had been opened. “Orange Is the New Black” came out something like three weeks after my book. “Transparent” was soon after as well. What came after delivered on the promise, which is that all these other kinds of stories were going to be able to be told, and all these other kinds of voices were going to be empowered. “Atlanta” and “Reservation Dogs” are other deliveries on that promise.What effect did the rise of streaming platforms, with their hundreds of millions of subscribers, have on Hollywood’s appetite for ambitious TV?When the book was published, it was more important [to the producers of these early prestige series] to stand out and find the right kinds of viewers than to have the most. It made sense that that attitude moved from subscription cable to basic — in my book, it’s HBO to FX and AMC — and streaming seemed it would be another step in that. But it does seem as though every piece that I identified as being crucial to the invention of this new TV is now a flashpoint in the writers’ strike: shorter seasons, writer-producers, writers’ rooms. And it’s depressing. With all the stuff that looked great, the streamers saw there were opportunities for cost savings.Are there ways streaming made TV better for viewers?Oh, my God. Look how much work we got! So much that I can’t keep up — that I feel a constant sense of anxiety about missing things. Look how many new voices we got. That’s been the trade-off. More

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      Drew Barrymore Pauses Show’s Return Until End of Strike

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      Taping began on her talk show last week, but at the 11th hour Barrymore changed course, and at least two other daytime programs followed.After an onslaught of criticism over her decision to return her show to the air while Hollywood is on strike, Drew Barrymore reversed herself on Sunday and at least two other shows did the same.Barrymore announced her change of course in an Instagram post, just a day before her talk show was to begin broadcasting. Taping resumed last Monday for the daytime program.After the announcement, “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” which is produced by Warner Bros., and the CBS show “The Talk,” rolled back previously announced plans to start broadcasting new episodes on Monday. CBS said in a statement on Sunday regarding “The Talk,” that it would pause its season premiere and “evaluate plans for a new launch date.”The return of production for Barrymore’s show attracted picketers from the striking writers’ and actors’ unions, and on Friday, she defended her decision in an emotional Instagram video, saying, “This is bigger than me.”CBS Media Ventures, which produces “The Drew Barrymore Show,” echoed her resolution at that point, saying more than 150 jobs would be affected. The company noted that she would be using a fully ad-libbed format, without anyone replacing the production’s three striking writers.But on Friday night, she deleted the video, and on Sunday morning released a statement changing course. The syndicated program was to begin airing new episodes on Monday.“I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show’s premiere until the strike is over,” the statement said. “I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today. We really tried to find our way forward. And I truly hope for a resolution for the entire industry very soon.”In a statement on Sunday, CBS Media said it supported her latest decision and understood “how complex and difficult this process has been for her.”Although Barrymore was not the only daytime talk show host to announce a return during the strikes, she has received the most criticism, perhaps in part because in May she decided to bow out of hosting the MTV Movie and TV Awards in solidarity with Writers Guild of America members.The daytime juggernaut “The View,” for example, has been airing new episodes filmed without its unionized writers.Bill Maher announced last week that his weekly show on HBO would be returning, defending his decision in a social media post, saying, “I’m not prepared to lose an entire year and see so many below-the-line people suffer so much.”Members of the Writers Guild have been on strike since May, and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists began its strike in July.Barrymore herself is a member of SAG-AFTRA, but as a host she is covered by a separate agreement called the Network Code, making it technically permissible for her to present the show during the strike.Late-night shows have the same option, but thus far, many network hosts have decided not to take it. Instead, five of the big-name hosts — Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver — have started a podcast together, with proceeds going toward supporting their staffs.Returning amid the strikes may look even less appealing to other hosts after Barrymore’s ordeal. A day after her show resumed production, the National Book Foundation dropped her as the host of the National Books Awards.Her social media pages were filled with people urging her to walk back her decision to resume production, advice she heeded in less than a week. More

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      ‘Live With Kelly and Mark’: Till Death (or Cancellation) Do They Part

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      At the start of the Feb. 16 episode of the ABC morning talk show “Live With Kelly and Ryan,” before the actress Camryn Manheim demonstrated her knowledge of American Sign Language, before Ryan Seacrest and the show’s resident D.J. competed in a game called “Love Songs,” the show’s host Kelly Ripa made an announcement: Seacrest, who had hosted with her for six years, would soon be departing. His replacement? “My husband, Mark Consuelos, in what Ryan and I are calling the nation’s weirdest social experiment.”“Live,” which began in 1988 as “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee,” hosted by Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, has always depended, as its executive producer Michael Gelman told me, on the illusion that the hosts are a married couple who have invited some unusually glamorous friends over for morning coffee. He referred to the hosts — any hosts — as “this faux husband-and-wife, only they’re better looking and smarter and more vivacious than your normal neighbors,” he said.But Ripa and Consuelos (“Riverdale,” “Alpha House”) are actually husband and wife. They’ve been married for over 27 years. “That’s 270” in showbiz years,” Ripa joked. What would it mean when Take Your Husband to Work Day was suddenly every day? What would it mean to perform your marriage for millions of households?“I can’t wait to watch,” Seacrest said back in February, grinning widely.Ripa said she doesn’t believe her chemistry with Consuelos on “Live” is anything special. “It is my job to make sure my partner looks good at all times, no matter who my partner is,” she said.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesI visited the show on the first two mornings of the couple’s first full season together, in early September, about five months after Consuelos’s debut. There was no picket line to cross; the show does not employ Writers Guild members. Six cameras — three stationary, three roving — captured Ripa’s sleek blowout, her husband’s impossibly white teeth. This far into Consuelos’s tenure, their rhythms and repartee were established. She was the giddy cheer captain, a glammed up version of, as she put it, “a simple girl from New Jersey.” He was the hunky straight man.I wanted to know, as far one can ever know these kinds of things when it comes to unscripted television, just how much of this was for the many cameras and how much spoke to their real relationship. Marriage, after all, is another kind of performance, with each spouse filling what is hopefully a complementary role. These two seem better at that act than most. Where did the act end? Did it end?The first time Ripa and Consuselos pretended to be a couple was in 1995, during a chemistry read for the ABC soap “All My Children.” Ripa was already a star of the show, playing the party girl turned private investigator turned cosmetics chief executive Hayley Vaughan. Consuelos was auditioning to play her new love interest, Mateo Santos. The two actors had met in the rehearsal hall the day before, Ripa’s hair in giant curlers.“Are you sure you want this job?” she asked him. She gestured to a blob of toothpaste she had applied to a pimple. “Look what they do to you.”Consuelos did want the job. He and Ripa wanted each other, too. They were married, secretly, in Las Vegas, a year later and had their first child a year after that. Hayley and Mateo enjoyed a somewhat more eventful relationship: kidnapping, bigamy, arson, near death and at least one alternate personality. In 2002, in a soap-imitating-life move, their characters were written off, with Hayley moving across the country to host a talk show.In reality, the couple remained a quick cab ride from the ABC studios, with Ripa having joined Philbin as the co-host of what became “Live With Regis and Kelly,” a cozy, upbeat robe-and-slippers hour. But even off the soap, the couple’s onscreen lives remained intertwined, with Consuelos guest hosting “Live” nearly 100 times. They were familiar figures at galas, on red carpets, in the pages of glossy magazines, posting sultry pictures of each other on Instagram, rendering a relationship for the camera.Michael Gelman, a longtime executive producer of “Live,” said that the show has always depended on the illusion that the hosts are a married couple who have invited some glamorous friends over. Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesPhilbin retired in 2011, replaced eventually by Michael Strahan. After Strahan left in 2016 for “Good Morning America,” abruptly and amid tensions that have since been publicized, Ryan Seacrest took up the branded coffee mug. Last year, when Seacrest decided that he would soon move on, his heir was apparent.On the Tuesday after Labor Day, Consuelos, in a sweater tight enough to outline each pec, strode onto the living room set as though it were his second home. Which in a way, it is.Ripa, glamorous in a Barbie-pink dress, shared vacation photos and teased Consuelos about his workout habits, mentioning a recent ice bath. “He looked like a frozen margarita,” she told the audience.Consuelos didn’t mind the ribbing. He teed up punchlines for her. She finished his sentences. During a trivia segment, “Stump Mark,” Consuelos evaluated the truth value of a caller’s statements with terrifying seriousness. Ripa, who joked with me that her husband has “resting dictator face,” teased him for this, too.On one episode they did a segment that involved several team building exercises. “Trust falls and blindfolds? It’s like being at home,” Ripa said wickedly.“We know how to compartmentalize,” Ripa said of keeping certain elements of her and Consuelos’s personal and professional lives separate.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesReally? Ripa thought so. “The version of us at home is very similar to the version you see on TV,” she said. “But we look nice and we sound good.” This was during a post-show chat on the following day in their actual home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. After the show, wardrobe changes and a few extra segments, a sleek, S.U.V. had spirited the couple from an ABC loading bay across Central Park to their townhouse.Ripa’s brand has always been one of extreme relatability. This house, with its imposing facade and marble interiors, was not quite so approachable, but it was somehow familiar. The living room where we sat (beige furniture, gold accents, light like poured honey) was more luxurious than the TV version but still hewed closely to it. Figuring out which was the simulacrum made my head hurt. Especially because offscreen the couple still sounded good. And they still looked nice, even as Ripa swabbed off her photo shoot makeup with a series of wet wipes.“I’m slowly melting back into myself,” she said, removing a false eyelash.That self seemed very like the TV one. She held her body more loosely, it’s true, and her manner was arguably more subdued, as was Consuelo’s. They do keep some things private, they assured me.“Talk about 401ks or wills, discussions we’ve had about passing things on, you wouldn’t want to watch that,” Consuelos said. Whether this had more to do with self-protection or audience savvy wasn’t quite clear.Their time in the soap, particularly that first year, when their relationship was a secret, has taught them not to let everyday worries or arguments bleed into airtime. “We know how to compartmentalize,” Ripa said.Friends and colleagues say that Consuelos and Ripa aren’t essentially different in real life from their onscreen personas. Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesEven so, colleagues confirmed that there wasn’t a lot of daylight between Ripa and her “Live” persona. The same went for Consuelos. Seacrest said that occasional obscenities were the only difference.“A few vocabulary choices are made, but the essence of their humor and their relationship is what we get every morning,” he said.The TV personality Andy Cohen, a longtime friend, agreed. “What they’re portraying onscreen is a natural extension of themselves,” he said. “For two people in this business, which can be so divisive, they really are such a unit together. And it really shines through in everything they do.” He added that for a long married couple, “they’re very hot for each other.”Between them is a palpable attraction, evident both on the “Live” set and back at home, as Ripa rested her bare feet against Consuelos’s thigh and I wondered if I should leave the room for a while. But Ripa doesn’t believe that the chemistry she and Consuelos share on “Live” is anything special.“I just know that as a co-host of a show, it is my job to make sure my partner looks good at all times, no matter who my partner is,” she said.Still, that chemistry helped make the choice of Consuelos an easy one for network, not so much for the couple, who delayed accepting the offer for months. Consuelos, who was finishing a seven-season stint on “Riverdale,” wondered if people would take him seriously as an actor once he was established as a permanent morning show fixture. There was also the more nebulous worry that he might be perceived as a nepotism hire.“I may have had a flash of, What is this going to look like?” he said.Ripa had her own concerns. For a woman who delights in jokes, she is wholly serious about the job and the comfort she believes it brings. She mentioned mothers struggling to breastfeed, patients undergoing chemotherapy, residents of nursing homes. These people, she insists, are the show’s audience. “There’s a lot of people that are counting on us to make them feel better,” she said.For a long married couple, “they’re very hot for each other,” the TV personality Andy Cohen, a longtime friend, said.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesThat felt like a lot of responsibility for one couple. “We don’t want to be the people that ruin television,” she said.So far, television — or at least the narrow tranche of unscripted television not subject to contract negotiations — seems fine. Which isn’t a surprise. Consuelos was hardly an unknown quantity and if he has had to acquire a few more skills — intros, outros, how to pause an interview just before a commercial break — he has acquired them quickly. And ratings are steady, which means that the experiment, which was never especially weird, is a success.Gelman had told me that the other secret of the show, other than the faux husband-and-wife act, is the enjoyment that the hosts take in each other. “The audience knows when you’re having a good time versus when you’re faking it,” he said.If Ripa and Consuelos are faking it, no one can tell. Not me. Maybe not even the couple themselves. In their presence, the continuum of reality and performance, life and “Live,” felt as slippery as some very expensive skin care serum. It slid through my fingers every time. The easy banter that Ripa and Consuelos trade onscreen, they kept it going during the commercial breaks, as they accepted hugs and gifts from audience members. They kept it going at home.On the first day I visited the set, after the blindfold bit, the show ended. The cameras stopped rolling. The microphones cut out. Their work was done. But Consuelos and Ripa stayed in their seats, heads bent close together, still chatting. More

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      How Shane Gillis Both Plays to and Mocks Red Staters

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      The comic’s savvy approach fits into the evolving meaning of conservatism and has resulted in hugely popular stand-up specials, like “Beautiful Dogs” on Netflix.At the start of his new special “Beautiful Dogs,” Shane Gillis, a bulky comic with the mustache of a Staten Island cop, announces that America is the best country in the world and that all the others suck. His crowd roars. Then he says he’s only been to three other countries and when he boasts about his home abroad, they ask about mass shootings.“There’s really not a good comeback,” he says, shifting from swaggering to struggling, then exclaims, using a profanity: “What, are we going to give up our guns like a bunch of gay guys?” His tone flattens into resignation: “No, we’re just going to have shootings all the time.”This opening bit, which celebrates and satirizes rah-rah American jingoism in the style of “South Park,” encapsulates the Shane Gillis experience. It’s got the amiable idiot swagger, plus the trolling offensive spin. Then there’s the satirical overlay that subverts the perspective. It’s dumb and smart, cocky and self-mocking, homophobic but relentlessly self-aware.Since getting fired from “Saturday Night Live” in 2019 after videos surfaced of him using Asian and gay slurs on a podcast, Gillis has built perhaps one of the fastest growing comedy careers in America. His debut special, released on YouTube in 2021, racked up a staggering 14 million views, and he’s the most popular podcaster on Patreon with more than 71,000 paying listeners. “Beautiful Dogs,” his second special, has been lodged in Netflix’s Top 10 most popular shows since the streamer released it on Sept. 5. He regularly sells out theaters. Don’t be surprised if he becomes an arena act.Getting fired paid off. It made Gillis a martyr to some, and he was savvy enough to embrace those fans without tediously obsessing over cancel culture. He has said he understood the criticism of his comments, offered a halfhearted apology, then doubled down on lumbering through the china shop of cultural sensitivities. A comic who tells the crowd he has no female friends isn’t looking to appeal to everyone.There’s an element of shock jock to his persona. Onstage, his bits are more controlled and agile than they seem, and he’s skilled at winning fans in unexpected places. Speaking in an admiring 2022 New Yorker profile of Gillis, the comic Jerrod Carmichael, who came out as gay in his last special, called him one of the few truly funny comics working today. “His material still feels dangerous,” he said.Gillis, a 35-year-old former football player from central Pennsylvania, often holds the microphone with two hands, more like a singer than a stand-up. His attitude is less telling you the truth about the world than stumbling through the mess of his thought process. His appearance telegraphs rumpled ordinary guy, not polished entertainer. And he speaks to crowds as if he were messing around with friends. Few comics do more with the word “dude.”To fully understand his success, you must use a word taboo in certain comedy circles: conservative. Many comics who rail against cancel culture tend to flinch at that one. Call Joe Rogan one and you will hear umbrage and a list of his liberal policy positions. And look, no one likes to be pigeonholed. But there is a political valence to Gillis’s comedy and the way it fits into the evolving meaning of what it is to be right wing.Being conservative in the age of Trump is not as much about opinions on free markets or foreign policy anymore; now it can mean projecting a certain attitude, alternatively nostalgic and contemptuous, fixated on the supposed oppressiveness of liberal norms and bluntly giddy about transgressing them.That posture sits comfortably in the comedy scene. It’s no accident that two prime-time hosts on Fox (Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld) cut their teeth doing comedy, of sorts. Part of the reason Gillis is such a phenomenon is clearly political. (The title of the special is a Trump quote.)Right-wing media adores him. The Spectator called his success a major turning point in the resurgence of comedy. But unlike comics who are primarily animated by caricaturing and picking apart the left, Gillis lands a broader crowd by focusing on an affectionately mocking insider perspective of the half of the country that voted for Trump (which isn’t to say he did, though there’s no question he finds the politician hilarious).There are MAGA-like identity politics at the center of some of his bits, as when he describes the story of the first baseball game played by Jackie Robinson not as a civil rights landmark but as the moment when white people stopped being cool. “I know what I look like,” he says. “I got the body type of the guy who says, Let’s look at the rest of the body cam footage before jumping to any conclusions.”His last special lovingly poked fun at his “Fox News dad,” who goes to bed angry every night. In “Beautiful Dogs,” he describes himself as a bit of a history buff, which he calls a sign of “early onset Republican.” He levels with his audience: “If you’re a white dude in your 20s and 30s and can’t stop reading about World War II, it’s coming, brother.”The assumptions here are that being a Republican makes you a beleaguered outsider. He compares the pull of it to that of a person turning into a werewolf. “I’m not a Republican, but I can feel it,” he says. “It grows.”Gillis, who lives in New York, regularly works clubs here, and there’s a way that his comedy is pitched as an explanation of a red state sensibility for a blue state audience. Some of this can feel forced and far below his intelligence, tipping over into Larry the Cable Guy territory.He uses a hack sexist line, only to draw attention to how bad it is. His punchlines about porn cover well-trod ground, and his contrarian joke about terrorists is similar to the one that got Bill Maher fired from his ABC show after Sept. 11. Gillis can get stuck in his own bubble, drawing some familiar or easy laughs. His new special has more sex jokes than his last, some about his own grossness (“coughing during sex is funny”) and others about the hopelessness of being competitive with the Navy SEAL who previously dated his girlfriend.His most ambitious bit in the new hour involves a trip to George Washington’s Mount Vernon during the racial upheaval of 2020. He describes the absurdity of the historical re-enactors, but also the gruesome detail of the slave quarters, mapping how he vacillated between hero worship of our first president and denunciation of our country’s original sin.Not unlike his opening bit, Gillis moves back and forth on his feelings about our country through the narrative of Washington, his military exploits, his lore. “I was trying to be cool and liberal and hate him,” he says. “Couldn’t do it.”Interestingly, he includes a joke that is identical to one John Oliver recently told mocking the idea that we are more divided than ever by bringing up the Civil War. Of course, in the 19th century, we couldn’t express our dislike for one another as easily. But what hasn’t changed is that people remain curious about those different from them, even those they dislike or hate. It may be human nature or strategy. (Know thine enemy.)Partly people watch Shane Gillis for the same reason some liberals binge Fox News — to see how the other half thinks. More