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      Tony Sirico, an Eccentric Gangster on ‘The Sopranos,’ Dies at 79

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      A familiar face in Woody Allen movies, he became widely known for his portrayal of Paulie Walnuts on the hit HBO series.Tony Sirico, the actor best known for playing the eccentric gangster Paulie Walnuts on the hit HBO series “The Sopranos,” died on Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 79.His death, in an assisted living facility, was confirmed by Bob McGowan, his manager. No cause was given.Paulie Walnuts — that was Paul Gualtieri’s nickname because he once hijacked a truck full of nuts (he was expecting television sets) — was one of the mob boss Tony Soprano’s most loyal, oversensitive and reckless men. Paulie was the kind of guy who would participate in an intervention for a drug addict and, when it was his turn to speak, punch the guy in the face. He loved his mother (although he found out she was really his aunt), and she loved him because he wrote the checks to keep her in an expensive nursing home.Paulie wore track suits, slept with hookers, was phobic about germs, hated cats and watched television in a chair covered with plastic. He hated being stuck with an almost $900 restaurant check but could appreciate a tasty ketchup packet on a cold night in the Pine Barrens when there was nothing else to eat.When the “Sopranos” cast appeared in a group shot on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2001, Paulie stood with a baseball bat casually slung over his right shoulder. No hairdresser on the “Sopranos” set was allowed to touch Mr. Sirico’s hair — dark and luxuriant, with two silver “wings” on either side. He blow-dried and sprayed it himself.Mr. Sirico’s face was also familiar, in quick glimpses, to fans of Woody Allen films. He appeared in several of them, beginning with “Bullets Over Broadway” (1994), in which he played the right-hand man of a powerful gangster turned theater producer. He was a boxing trainer in “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995), an escaped convict in “Everyone Says I Love You” (1996), a matter-of-fact jailhouse cop in “Deconstructing Harry” (1997) and a gun-toting gangster on Coney Island in “Wonder Wheel” (2017).Gennaro Anthony Sirico Jr. was born in Brooklyn on July 29, 1942, the son of Jerry Sirico, a stevedore, and Marie (Cappelluzzo) Sirico. Junior, as he was called, remembered that he first got into trouble when he stole nickels from a newsstand. He attended Midwood High School but did not graduate, his brother Robert Sirico said.“I grew up in Bensonhurst, where there were a lot of mob-type people,” he told the publication Cigar Aficionado in 2001. “I watched them all the time, watched the way they walked, the cars they drove, the way they approached each other. There was an air about them that was very intriguing, especially to a kid.”He worked in construction for a while but soon yielded to temptation. “I started running with the wrong type of guys, and I found myself doing a lot of bad things,” he said in James Toback’s 1989 documentary, “The Big Bang.” Bad things like armed robbery, extortion, coercion and felony weapons possession.While serving 20 months of a four-year sentence at Sing Sing, the maximum-security prison in Ossining, N.Y., he saw a troupe of actors, all ex-convicts, who had made a stop there to perform for the inmates. “When I watched them, I said to myself, ‘I can do that,’” he told The Daily News of New York in 1999.Mr. Sirico was an uncredited extra in “The Godfather: Part II” (1974) and made his official film debut in “Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell” (1977), directed by Larry Buchanan, a self-proclaimed”cinema schlockmeister.” He followed that with more than a decade of small television and movie roles, capped by his part as the flashy mobster Tony Stacks in “Goodfellas” (1990).Mr. Sirico filming a scene from “The Sopranos” with James Gandolfini, who played Tony Soprano, in Kearny, N.J., in 2007.Mike Derer/Associated PressHis first advocate among directors was Mr. Toback, who put him in a crime drama, “Fingers” (1978), with Harvey Keitel; a romantic drama, “Love & Money” (1981), starring Ray Sharkey and Klaus Kinski; and a comic drama, “The Pick-Up Artist” (1987), with Molly Ringwald and Robert Downey Jr., as well as featuring him in his 1989 documentary.Before “The Sopranos,” he was a police officer in “Dead Presidents” (1995), a suburban mobster in “Cop Land” (1997) and a Gambino crime family capo in the TV movie “Gotti” (1996).Once “The Sopranos” hit the air in 1999, it became enormously and widely popular. Mr. Sirico soon knew he was very famous.“If I’m with five other Paulies,” he told The New York Times in 2007, imagining a fairly unlikely situation, “and somebody yells, ‘Hey, Paulie,’ I know it’s for me.”After “The Sopranos” ended in 2007, he often worked with his co-stars.He played Bert, to Steve Schirripa’s Ernie, in a “Sesame Street” Christmas special (2008), and went on to appear with Steven Van Zandt in the series “Lilyhammer” (2013-14), with Michael Rispoli in “Friends and Romans” (2014) and with Vincent Pastore and others in the film “Sarah Q” (2018).He also voiced a street-smart dog named Vinny in several episodes of the animated series “Family Guy.”He appeared in a crime drama, “Respect the Jux,” this year. Mr. Sirico married and divorced early. In addition to his brother Robert, he is survived by two children, Joanne Sirico Bello and Richard Sirico; a sister, Carol Pannunzio; another brother, Carmine; and several grandchildren. He brought at least one admirable lesson from the mob world to “The Sopranos”: He insisted that his character never be portrayed as a rat, someone who would snitch on his crime family. He was also reluctant to have his character kill a woman — Paulie smothered an older nursing home resident with a pillow when she interrupted his theft of her life savings — but he was pleasantly surprised that people in the old neighborhood didn’t seem to think less of him after the episode was shown.Early on, however, it sometimes slipped his mind that he had rejected the dark side.“I was this 30-year-old ex-con villain sitting in a class filled with fresh-faced, serious drama students,” Mr. Sirico recalled in the Daily News interview. The teacher “leaned over to me after I did a scene and whispered, ‘Tony, leave the gun home.’ After so many years of packing a gun, I didn’t even realize I had it with me.”Vimal Patel More

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      Larry Storch, Comic Actor Best Known for ‘F Troop,’ Dies at 99

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      His well-honed comic timing, and the mimicry skills he had developed in nightclubs, served him well on one of the sillier sitcoms of the 1960s.Larry Storch, who played a memorable television oddball on the 1960s sitcom “F Troop” and for years carried a secret in his personal life that was odd in an entirely different way, died on Friday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 99.His stepdaughter, June Cross, confirmed the death.Mr. Storch had a long career as a nightclub comic and as a character actor on the stage and the big and small screens. But his other work was dwarfed by the impression he made during the two-season run of “F Troop” on ABC, from 1965 to 1967.The show was a slapstick comedy about an outpost called Fort Courage in Indian country just after the Civil War, and Mr. Storch played Cpl. Randolph Agarn, one of the bigger misfits in a unit full of them. Agarn and his business partner, Sgt. Morgan O’Rourke, played by Forrest Tucker, were constantly hatching moneymaking schemes, most of them involving the local Indian tribe, the Hekawis.O’Rourke was the brains of the partnership; Agarn provided the idiocy, and Mr. Storch’s well-honed comic timing served him deliciously in the role. So did the mimicry skills he had honed in nightclubs, where his act included all sorts of impersonations: In various “F Troop” episodes he played not only Agarn but also assorted Agarn relatives, who somehow found their way to the fort from far-off locales. “I had cousins who came from Moscow, Mexico, Montreal,” Mr. Storch recalled in a 2009 interview. “F Troop” wasn’t on long. But, like many sitcoms in that era of limited television choices, it burned itself into the minds of those who watched it, perhaps in part because it trafficked in the kinds of stereotypes — especially those hard-drinking, firewater-brewing Indians — that would soon disappear from television.Mr. Storch, in a 2007 interview with The Asbury Park Press, credited Mr. Tucker with securing him the role of Agarn.“I was supposed to be the sergeant,” Mr. Storch said, “but when they saw Forrest Tucker dressed in a cavalry suit — he looked like a polar bear — they said, ‘That’s going to be it.’ And Forrest Tucker said: ‘Wait a minute. I’m going to need a corporal around here, and I think he and I would have good chemistry.’” The “he” was Mr. Storch.When not clowning around on the stage or screen, Mr. Storch was party to an unusual secret at home. Before he and his wife, Norma Greve, were married in 1961, she had had a biracial daughter, Ms. Cross, with a Black performer named Jimmy Cross. Mother and child left Mr. Cross soon after June’s birth in 1954, but since the girl was dark-complexioned enough that she could not pass as white, she and her mother began encountering racism. When June was 4, Norma asked friends, a middle-class Black couple in Atlantic City, N.J., to raise her.Later, when the Storches were married and living in Hollywood, June would come to visit, and they would explain to friends that she was an abused child of former neighbors and that they had adopted her, but that she lived most of the year with Black friends.“In those days, people were encrusted in prejudice,” Mr. Storch explained to People magazine in a 1996 interview. “We saw no reason to rock the boat.”June Cross later became a television producer and then a professor at Columbia University. In 1996 she told her story in “Secret Daughter,” a documentary broadcast on PBS, which won an Emmy Award. The personal story of Mr. Storch and his wife has another wrinkle as well. In 1948, years before they were married, they had a daughter, whom they put up for adoption. After Ms. Cross’s documentary came out, the Storches and that daughter, Candace Herman, were reunited.After “F Troop,” Mr. Storch found steady work on other TV shows. He played a reporter who impersonates a priest in a 1969 episode of “The Flying Nun,” with Sally Field.ABC Photo Archives/Disney via Getty ImagesLawrence Samuel Storch was born on Jan. 8, 1923, in Manhattan. His father, Alfred, is described in several biographical listings as a real estate agent, though in a 1983 interview with The Washington Post Mr. Storch said he was a cabdriver. His mother, Sally (Kupperman) Storch, was a telephone operator who later had a jewelry store and ran a rooming house.Ms. Cross, in a telephone interview, said that as a child Mr. Storch would pick up voices and accents from the rooming house guests (Orson Welles, he always said, was one) that served him well later as a comedian.Mr. Storch left high school during the Depression when he found that he could make a few dollars doing impressions in the city’s clubs and acting as M.C. for vaudeville shows. He served in the Navy during World War II. By the time television came along, he was a well-established comic in the city and had used his mimicry skills to gain a foothold in radio.He first came to the attention of television audiences in 1951 as a guest host of “Cavalcade of Stars,” and in 1953 CBS picked him to host the summer replacement show that filled Jackie Gleason’s Saturday night slot. A string of television appearances followed, including a recurring role on “Car 54, Where Are You?” Mr. Storch was also the voice of the TV version of Koko the Clown in scores of cartoon shorts, and teamed with his friend Don Adams as one of the voices in the 1963 cartoon series “Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales.”Then came “F Troop,” which brought Mr. Storch an Emmy nomination in 1967. He worked steadily in television through the 1980s, doing guest spots on “The Flying Nun,” “The Love Boat,” “Love, American Style” and numerous other shows. In 1975 he reunited with Mr. Tucker in a live-action children’s show called “The Ghost Busters,” in which the two men played detectives who searched for spooks. (The show was unrelated to the later “Ghostbusters” movies.)One of Mr. Storch’s Navy friends was a fellow sailor named Bernard Schwartz, who became better known as Tony Curtis and gave Mr. Storch roles in several of his films, including “40 Pounds of Trouble” (1962), “Sex and the Single Girl” (1964) and “The Great Race” (1965).Mr. Curtis and Mr. Storch teamed up again years later, in 2002, in a stage musical version of “Some Like It Hot,” the 1959 Billy Wilder movie that had starred Mr. Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. (The show drew upon the 1972 Broadway musical “Sugar” and added new material.) Mr. Curtis played not his original role, a musician on the run from gangsters who joins a band disguised as a woman, but the millionaire Osgood Fielding; Mr. Storch played the band manager, Bienstock.That show, which toured the country, never made Broadway, but Mr. Storch had a half-dozen Broadway appearances to his credit, beginning with “The Littlest Revue,” a 1956 show that also starred Joel Grey. In 1958 he appeared in the play “Who Was That Lady I Saw You With?,” and he had roles in revivals of “Porgy and Bess” (1983), “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1986), “Annie Get Your Gun” (2000) and “Sly Fox” (2004). His other films included Blake Edwards’s “S.O.B.” and the disaster movie “Airport 1975.” His vocal talents turned up in numerous cartoons as well as in McDonald’s commercials (“the most money I ever made,” he said in 2009).Mr. Storch’s wife died in 2003. His brother, Jay, an actor who used the name Jay Lawrence, died in 1987. In addition to Ms. Cross and Ms. Herman, he is survived by a stepson, Lary May, the author of several books on film and popular culture; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Mr. Storch at a birthday party for Jerry Lee Lewis at B.B. King Blues Club and Gril in Manhattan in 2017. He continued to make public appearances late in life.Derek Storm/Everett CollectionMr. Storch was still making public appearances late in life. In June 2014 he served as mayor for a day of Fort Lee., N.J., a town where he had once performed. That September he appeared at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles and was honored with a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars.In 2016 he was honored by Passaic, N.J., the city the fictitious Corporal Agarn called home. Mayor Alex Blanco said at the ceremony that Passaic had been mentioned all over the world because of “F Troop”; Mr. Storch said that he had never been there before, but that he had chosen Passaic for his character’s hometown because “it sounded tough.”In his later years Mr. Storch maintained an active Facebook page and posted videos on TikTok. He also put in appearances at Wild West City, a western-themed attraction in Stanhope, N.J. In July 2021, at 98, for what was billed as his final public appearance, he toured the site in a sporty red sedan, hamming it up for onlookers.Mr. Storch could sometimes be seen playing the saxophone, a lifelong hobby, in Central Park. Another signature activity, even late in life, was standing on his head. “It helps your breathing,” he explained in 2002 to a reporter for The Detroit News, while standing on his head. “The blood goes to your brain, whatever brain you have.” More

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      Jerry Harris Sentenced to 12 Years for Sex Crimes Involving Minors

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      Mr. Harris, who shot to reality-TV fame in the Netflix documentary series “Cheer,” had pleaded guilty to federal charges related to soliciting child sexual abuse imagery and illegal sexual conduct with a minor.A judge in Chicago sentenced Jerry Harris, the Navarro College cheerleader who became a breakout star of the Netflix documentary series “Cheer,” to 12 years in prison on Wednesday on guilty pleas to two of seven federal charges related to sex crimes involving minors in February.Mr. Harris, 22, had reached a plea deal in February in which prosecutors agreed that after sentencing on the two counts — the charges that he persuaded a 17-year-old to send him sexually explicit photos for money and traveled to Florida “for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct” with a 15-year-old — they would ask that the remaining charges be dropped. He had initially pleaded not guilty to all seven charges in December 2020.Mr. Harris’s plea agreement noted that sentencing guidelines “may recommend 50 years in prison” for the offenses, though Judge Manish S. Shah had noted that he might decide differently. Judge Shah also ordered Mr. Harris to serve eight years of court-supervised release following his prison term.A lawyer for Mr. Harris, Todd Pugh, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.In a memo filed before the hearing, prosecutors had asked Judge Shah to sentence Mr. Harris to 15 years in prison, arguing that Mr. Harris took advantage of “his status as a competitive cheerleader, his social media persona, and eventually his celebrity and money, to persuade and entice his young victims to engage in sexually explicit conduct for him or with him.”Mr. Harris’s lawyers had requested a six-year prison term, to be followed by eight years of supervised release, arguing that Mr. Harris had himself been sexually abused as a child in the world of competitive cheerleading and therefore had a “skewed version of what he understood to be appropriate relationships.”The sentencing caps a case that began nearly two years ago in September 2020, when Mr. Harris was arrested and charged with production of child pornography, months after the release of “Cheer,” which follows a national champion cheerleading team from a small-town Texas community college.Around the same time, he was sued by teenage twin brothers who said he had sent sexually explicit messages to them, requested nude photos and solicited sex from them. (Mr. Harris befriended the boys when they were 13 and he was 19, USA Today reported.)In a voluntary interview with the authorities in 2020, Mr. Harris acknowledged that he had exchanged sexually explicit photos on Snapchat with at least 10 to 15 people he knew were minors and had sex with a 15-year-old at a cheerleading competition in 2019, according to a criminal complaint.After federal agents interviewed other minors who said they had had relationships with Mr. Harris, they filed additional felony charges against him. The charges that Mr. Harris did not plead guilty to as part of the agreement include four counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of enticement. The seven charges involve five minor boys.Mr. Harris has been held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago since his arrest. More

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      in Movies

      Directing the Beatles Was Just One Part of His Long and Winding Career

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      HUDSON, N.Y. — Of course I wanted to talk with Michael Lindsay-Hogg about the Beatles. Everyone wants to talk with him about the Beatles, especially since his star turn in “Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s epic documentary, which debuted last fall on Disney+.In January 1969, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg was the brash young film director who tried to charm and cajole John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr through warring agendas as they hashed out new songs and gave their last concert on a London rooftop. Soon after that, he started shaping his nearly 60 hours of footage into the documentary “Let It Be,” a film largely unavailable since its initial theatrical run in 1970.Mr. Lindsay-Hogg’s footage, as well as more than 100 hours of audio that he recorded with his crew, some of it with hidden microphones, got new life when Mr. Jackson cleaned it up and reassembled it for his nearly eight-hour series. Mr. McCartney and Mr. Starr, along with most critics, hailed “Get Back” as an upbeat corrective to Mr. Lindsay-Hogg’s more somber take.So would he like to talk about his time with the Beatles?“That was a small part of a long career,” he said in the sitting room of his three-bedroom Civil War-era house in Hudson, N.Y.He had a point. In the so-called Swinging London of the 1960s, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg made a name for himself as a creator of the music video, directing promotional films, as they were then called, for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who a decade and a half before MTV. In the early 1980s, he was again a trailblazer, as the co-director of “Brideshead Revisited,” an 11-hour adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel that was a forerunner of prestige television dramas like “The Sopranos.” He is also a Tony-nominated stage director, painter and author. Oh, and Orson Welles may very well be his biological father.It’s almost too much to get through. No wonder he had a request, delivered in a deadpan voice: “Please make the entire article about my painting.” But eventually, over the course of three interviews, we got around to John, Paul, George and Ringo.The Third ManMr. Lindsay-Hogg, 82, lives with his wife, Lisa Ticknor Lindsay-Hogg, a former fashion model and casting agent, in a narrow cream-colored house in this river town nestled into lush green hills. The rooms have a lived-in feel, with book stacks rising from table tops and the walls blanketed with paintings, many of them scavenged from flea markets, and photos from his varied career.“I am the maximalist,” he said. “Lisa is the organizer.”A photo on display in Mr. Lindsay-Hogg’s home of a dinner in London more than 50 years ago, after a screening of his film “Let It Be.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesIn addition to working with the Beatles, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg directed the Rolling Stones in the concert film “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesSprinkled among the decorations are posters from past projects, including “Agnes of God,” a 1982 Broadway play he directed, for which the actress Amanda Plummer won a Tony, and “The Object of Beauty,” a 1991 film written and directed by Mr. Lindsay-Hogg, with John Malkovich and Andie MacDowell in the lead roles. A sculpture of a rabbit head sits on a credenza. He got it in Harare, Zimbabwe, when he filmed Paul Simon’s “Graceland: The African Concert” in 1987.Three cats provide daily entertainment. “She’s a movie star waiting to happen,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said when a black cat named L’il Mew brushed against my leg.The couple has lived here less than two years. During lockdown, they rented a rock-star-style tour bus and fled Los Angeles, where they had lived since they were married in 2002. California’s wildfires were part of what drove them out.“The sky was yellow,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said. “You could taste the soot.”The move meant abandoning a city where he had deep ties. Although he was born in Manhattan and educated at Choate, the Connecticut prep school, he spent six years of his childhood in Hollywood, mingling with William Randolph Hearst, Olivia de Havilland and Humphrey Bogart.His mother was the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, who starred opposite Laurence Olivier in William Wyler’s “Wuthering Heights” in 1939. His father — at least, according to his birth certificate — was Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, a baronet of Rotherfield Hall in East Sussex, England. The younger Mr. Lindsay-Hogg inherited the title upon the elder’s death in 1999.“Technically, I could be a ‘Sir,’ but unlike Mick and Elton, I didn’t earn it,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said, referring to his friends Mick Jagger and Elton John.A young man in Swinging London: Mr. Lindsay-Hogg in 1965, when he was a director of the British pop music show “Ready Steady Go!”Evening Standard, via Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe question of paternity has long hovered over him. His mother, born in Ireland, made her American stage debut opposite Orson Welles in a 1938 revival of George Bernard Shaw’s “Heartbreak House.” The production was directed by Mr. Welles at the Mercury Theater, the New York repertory house he had co-founded. When Mr. Lindsay-Hogg was a teenager, his mother told him of the rumors that Mr. Welles, best known for his 1941 film classic “Citizen Kane,” was his biological father.“It certainly played into my life growing up, partly because of the way I look,” he said. “I was heavy when I was young, and Orson was heavy. I have a round face; he had a round face. I didn’t look like Edward Lindsay-Hogg, who, if anything, looked more like, say, Jeremy Irons.”At 19, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg had a small role in Mr. Welles’s stage production of “Chimes at Midnight” in Dublin. “I knew him over the years, and he’d pop up every so often,” he said. Shortly after the run, Mr. Welles offered him a job in a London production of Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros.” “He said, ‘I’ll call you in a couple of days and you can come over,’” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg recalled. “I then did not hear from him for five years.”Decades later, his mother, who had Alzheimer’s at the time, gave a cryptic confirmation that Mr. Welles was his father — then seemed to contradict it. Mr. Lindsay-Hogg got an answer when he spoke with Gloria Vanderbilt, a friend of his mother’s whom he had dated in the 1980s, while working on his 2011 memoir, “Luck and Circumstance.”“Gloria said, ‘I hesitate, because I promised your mother I wouldn’t say this, but she’s dead now. Geraldine told me Orson was your father,’” he recalled. He took a pause. “I’m kind of past that,” he said. “Whoever was in the bed that night was in the bed that night.”‘Seventh Career’He led me up a narrow staircase to a well-lit bedroom that he had converted into a painting studio. His latest work was on the easel: a portrait of a couple with haunted eyes that recalled the German Expressionists of the 1920s. Painting has become “a seventh career of sorts,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said.He said he recently sold four pieces at the Frieze Art Fair in Los Angeles, but art is more of a passion than a business. Painting also comes as a relief for someone who has endured the pressures of directing. “It’s all yours,” he said. “There’s no producer to say, ‘I don’t like that scene, why don’t you cut it out.’”Mr. Lindsay-Hogg calls painting his “seventh career.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesHe hasn’t abandoned show business entirely. In recent years he directed several episodes of the web comedy series “Tinsel’s Town,” about a YouTube star in Hollywood, and he is writing a script for a film he hopes to direct, set in 1946 Nevada.On the wall next to the staircase were two black-and-white close-up portraits of Mr. Jagger in his early 20s, both stills from the 1960s British pop music show “Ready Steady Go!,” the program that gave Mr. Lindsay-Hogg his start in directing at 24, a few years after he dropped out of Oxford. On the third episode he directed, the Rolling Stones performed “Play With Fire,” and Mr. Jagger made an immediate impression.“He was absolutely beautiful, like a Botticelli cosh boy,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg recalled, using an old British slang term for stylish teenage hoodlum.He went on to direct more than a dozen Rolling Stones music videos, from early hits like “Paint It Black” to “Start Me Up” in 1982, and has remained close with Mr. Jagger. Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said he called him for advice last year, shortly before he was scheduled to have valve-replacement heart surgery, a procedure Mr. Jagger had gone through.“Mick is creative,” he said, “but he’s also extremely practical.”In 1968, around the time of the release of the Rolling Stones album “Beggars Banquet,” Mr. Jagger asked him to direct a TV concert film. A few weeks later, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg called Mr. Jagger and said, as he recalled it: “‘I’m going to say seven words to you: “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.”’ And he got it. It just sounded right.”The production, filmed during a grueling one-day shoot on a London soundstage, included performances by the Who, Jethro Tull and a supergroup called the Dirty Mac featuring John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Yoko Ono. The Rolling Stones closed the show. Now considered a classic, the film was shelved until 1996, when it premiered at the New York Film Festival.“In late January ’69, while doing ‘Let It Be,’ I showed a rough cut to Mick, Keith and Allen Klein,” he said, referring to the guitarist Keith Richards and the group’s manager at the time. “When it was over, they thought the Who were great, but didn’t think the Stones were as good as they could be. Keith said, ‘If it were called “The Who’s Rock and Roll Circus,” I wouldn’t mind.’”Mr. Lennon’s appearance came as little surprise. Mr. Lindsay-Hogg had been working with the Beatles since 1966, when he directed promotional films for “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.” Two years later, he was at the helm for the videos for “Revolution” and “Hey Jude.”Let It Be?In late 1968, Mr. McCartney asked him to direct a television special meant to accompany the album the band was about to record. Mr. Lindsay-Hogg was enthusiastic, but he knew from experience that “four Beatles would be four opinions.”“Giving an idea to them was like putting a lump of meat in an animal’s cage,” he said. “One of them would pick it up and sniff it and toss it to the next one to take a bite.”A poster in Mr. Lindsay-Hogg’s home of a 1991 film he wrote and directed, “The Object of Beauty.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesHis leather-bound diaries, which he started keeping in the mid-1960s, in his library in Hudson, N.Y.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAfter 10 days of filming, it became clear that the production he had envisioned — a concert in a cinematic location, with Mr. Lindsay-Hogg pushing for an amphitheater in Libya, as well as a separate show documenting the rehearsals to run as a kind of teaser — was not going to happen. In the end, he did what he could to salvage something of the original idea by nudging the Beatles to the roof of the Savile Row building that housed Apple Corps, the group’s media company. There they played a glorious lunchtime set as passers-by peered up quizzically from the sidewalks below.Drawing from the dozens of hours that did not make it into “Let It Be,” Mr. Jackson turned Mr. Lindsay-Hogg into a major character in “Get Back”; his efforts to maintain some kind of momentum against long odds provided the three-part series with a narrative through-line. When “Get Back” started streaming, however, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg found himself in a vulnerable position: The man accustomed to a behind-the-camera role was now in the spotlight.And so he was seen chomping on a cigar and suggesting that he could film the Beatles playing a benefit show for orphans or sick children. “But I don’t mean for really sick kids,” he was quick to tell the group. “I mean for kids with broken legs. I mean, really, kind of, 1944 Hollywood musical Bing Crosby kids.” On social media, Disney+ viewers took swipes at his 28-year-old self, calling him “the upper class twit of the year,” among other insults.“I try to steer as clear from social media as possible,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said.He added that he is more concerned about the legacy of his own documentary. The Beatles skipped the premiere, and “Let It Be” has never appeared as a DVD or on streaming platforms. Most fans know it from washed-out videocassettes; and its reputation has suffered thanks to remarks made by Mr. Starr and Mr. McCartney. “There was no joy in it,” the Beatles drummer said last year on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”Mr. Lindsay-Hogg disagrees with that assessment.“There are moments of great sweetness,” he said. “No matter where you put the camera, no matter how you edited it, they loved each other. Anybody who sees ‘Let It Be’ again will find that.”He believes the tone he struck is not really so far from that of “Get Back,” which he said he found “terrific.” Mr. Jackson’s account, he added, had the advantage of being five times longer, its images and sound enhanced by 21st-century technology. “He had canvas to fit a Rubens painting,” he said, “and I had a canvas to fit a little David Hockney painting.”On July 20, 1969, the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the four Beatles and some family members attended a private screening of a rough cut of “Let It Be” in Hanover Square. They seemed pleased, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said. Afterward, he and his girlfriend at the time, the British actress Jean Marsh, went for a late dinner at Provans, a restaurant in the Fulham section of London, with Paul and Linda McCartney, Mr. Lennon and Ms. Ono, and the Apple executive Peter Brown.“It was a friendly meal,” he recalled. “We had a couple of bottles of wine and mostly talked about our differing childhoods. They were happy with the way things were going, certainly, otherwise there would have been no dinner.”“They were grown men, not the Fab Four of the early 1960s,” he added. “And they were OK with being shown navigating relationships which were old, but changing.”Mr. Lindsay-Hogg in his studio.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe film was a victim of bad timing, in his view. By the time of its May 1970 premiere, the Beatles had broken up. Traumatized fans saw it as “a breakup movie: ‘Mom and Dad are getting divorced!’” he said.Apple has said in the past that it had plans to rerelease “Let It Be” at some point, and Mr. Lindsay-Hogg believes it deserves a fresh viewing; but he doesn’t dwell on his time with the Beatles, or the past in general, he said.“I have a very, very good memory,” he said. “It may be because I never took all the drugs. But I’m very not-nostalgic. Nostalgia is, for me, like the vermouth that I do not put in my martini.”He has preserved much of what he went through with the Beatles in diaries, which he has kept since the “Ready Steady Go!” years.He led me to a bookcase in the memento-filled library next to his art studio. It was filled with dusty leather-bound diaries, many overstuffed with letters and photos. At my suggestion, he dug out the volume from 1969. It was curiously slender.He thumbed through the pages and landed on January 30, the blustery day in London when the Beatles played in public for the last time. As captured by Mr. Lindsay-Hogg and his team, their swan-song performance was the climax of both “Let It Be” and “Get Back.”The diary page was blank, except for one word scribbled in black ballpoint pen.Roof.“The busier you are,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said, “the less you write down.” More

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      Nazi Tapes Provide a Chilling Sequel to the Eichmann Trial

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      Sixty years after the execution of Adolf Eichmann, the logistics chief of the Holocaust, an Israeli documentary airs his confessions in his own voice.TEL AVIV — Six decades after the historic trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief engineers of the Holocaust, a new Israeli documentary series has delivered a dramatic coda: the boastful confessions of the Nazi war criminal, in his own voice.The hours of old tape recordings, which had been denied to Israeli prosecutors at the time of Mr. Eichmann’s trial, provided the basis for the series, called “The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes,” which has generated keen interest in Israel as it aired over the past month.The tapes fell into various private hands after being made in 1957 by a Dutch Nazi sympathizer, before eventually ending up in a German government archive, which in 2020 gave the Israeli co-creators of the series — Kobi Sitt, the producer; and Yariv Mozer, the director — permission to use the recordings.Mr. Eichmann went to the gallows insisting that he was a mere functionary following orders, denying responsibility for the crimes of which he had been found guilty. Describing himself as a small cog in the state apparatus who was in charge of train schedules, his professed mediocrity gave rise to the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil.The documentary uses re-enactments of gatherings of Nazi sympathizers in 1957 in Buenos Aires.Itiel Zion courtesy of Kan 11The documentary series intersperses Mr. Eichmann’s chilling words, in German, defending the Holocaust, with re-enactments of gatherings of Nazi sympathizers in 1957 in Buenos Aires, where the recordings were made.Exposing Mr. Eichmann’s visceral, ideological antisemitism, his zeal for hunting down Jews and his role in the mechanics of mass murder, the series brings the missing evidence from the trial to a mass audience for the first time.Mr. Eichmann can be heard swatting a fly that was buzzing around the room and describing it as having “a Jewish nature.”He told his interlocutors that he “did not care” whether the Jews he sent to Auschwitz lived or died. Having denied knowledge of their fate in his trial, he said on tape that the order was that “Jews who are fit to work should be sent to work. Jews who are not fit to work must be sent to the Final Solution, period,” meaning their physical destruction.“If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, I would say with satisfaction, ‘Good, we destroyed an enemy.’ Then we would have fulfilled our mission,” he said, referring to all the Jews of Europe.Kobi Sitt, the producer of the documentary, in the Jerusalem auditorium that served as a courtroom for Adolf Eichmann in 1961.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesMr. Mozer, the director, who was also the writer of the series and himself the grandson of Holocaust survivors, said, “This is proof against Holocaust deniers and a way to see the true face of Eichmann.”“With all modesty, through the series, the young generations will get to know the trial and the ideology behind the Final Solution,” he added.The documentary was recently screened for commanders and officers of the intelligence corps — an indication of the importance with which it has been viewed in Israel.Mr. Eichmann’s trial took place in 1961 after Mossad agents kidnapped him in Argentina and spirited him to Israel. The shocking testimonies of survivors and the full horror of the Holocaust were outlined in gruesome detail for Israelis and the rest of the world.The court had a wealth of documentation and testimony on which to base its conviction of Mr. Eichmann. The prosecution had also obtained more than 700 pages of transcripts of the tapes recorded in Buenos Aires, marked up with corrections in Mr. Eichmann’s handwriting.But Mr. Eichmann asserted that the transcripts distorted his words. The Supreme Court of Israel did not accept them as evidence, other than the handwritten notes, and Mr. Eichmann challenged the chief prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, to produce the original tapes, believing they were well hidden.Mr. Eichmann in court in 1961. He went to the gallows insisting that he was a mere functionary following orders, denying responsibility for the crimes of which he had been found guilty.GPO via Getty ImagesIn his account of the trial, “Justice in Jerusalem,” Mr. Hausner related how he had tried to get hold of the tapes until the last day of Mr. Eichmann’s cross-examination, noting, “He could hardly have been able to deny his own voice.”Mr. Hausner wrote that he had been offered the tapes for $20,000, a vast sum at the time, and that he had been prepared to approve the expenditure “considering their historical importance.” But the unidentified seller attached a condition that they not be taken to Israel until after the trial, Mr. Hausner said.The tapes were made by Willem Sassen, a Dutch journalist and a Nazi S.S. officer and propagandist during World War II. Part of a group of Nazi fugitives in Buenos Aires, he and Mr. Eichmann embarked on the recording project with an eye to publishing a book after Mr. Eichmann’s death. Members of the group met for hours each week at Mr. Sassen’s house, where they drank and smoked together.And Mr. Eichmann talked and talked.After Mr. Eichmann’s capture by the Israelis, Mr. Sassen sold the transcripts to Life magazine, which published an abridged, two-part excerpt. Mr. Hausner described that version as “cosmeticized.”Yariv Mozer, the director of the documentary. “This is proof against Holocaust deniers and a way to see the true face of Eichmann,” he said.Rob Latour/ShutterstockAfter Mr. Eichmann’s execution in 1962, the original tapes were sold to a publishing house in Europe and eventually acquired by a company that wished to remain anonymous and that deposited the tapes in the German federal archives in Koblenz, with instructions that they should be used only for academic research.Bettina Stangneth, a German philosopher and historian, partially based her 2011 book “Eichmann Before Jerusalem” on the tapes. The German authorities released just a few minutes of audio for public consumption more than two decades ago, “to prove it exists,” Mr. Mozer said.Mr. Sitt, the producer of the new documentary, made a movie for Israeli television about Mr. Hausner 20 years ago. The idea of obtaining the Eichmann tapes had preoccupied him ever since, he said. Like the director, Mr. Mozer, he is an Israeli grandson of Holocaust survivors.“I’m not afraid of the memory, I’m afraid of the forgetfulness,” Mr. Sitt said of the Holocaust, adding that he wanted “to provide a tool to breathe life into the memory” as the generation of survivors fades away.He approached Mr. Mozer after seeing his 2016 documentary “Ben-Gurion, Epilogue,” which revolved around a long-lost taped interview with Israel’s founding prime minister.The German authorities and the owner of the tapes gave the filmmakers free access to 15 hours of surviving audio. (Mr. Sassen had recorded about 70 hours, but he had taped over many of the expensive reels after transcribing them.) Mr. Mozer said that the owner of the tapes and the archive had finally agreed to give the filmmakers access, believing that they would treat the material respectfully and responsibly.Visitors at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial in 2019. Mr. Eichmann said on the tapes that he “did not care” whether the Jews he sent to Auschwitz lived or died.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesThe project grew into a nearly $2 million joint production between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Sipur, an Israeli company formerly known as Tadmor Entertainment; Toluca Pictures; and Kan 11, Israel’s public broadcaster.A 108-minute version premiered as the opening movie at the Docaviv film festival in Tel Aviv this spring. A 180-minute television version was aired in three episodes in Israel in June. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is looking for partners to license and air the series around the world.The conversations in Mr. Sassen’s living room are interspersed with archival footage and interviews with surviving participants of the trial. The archival footage has been colorized because, the filmmakers said, young people think of black-and-white footage as unrealistic, as if from a different planet.Prof. Dina Porat, the chief historian of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, said that she had listened to the Eichmann trial “from morning till night” on the radio as a 12th grader.“The whole of Israeli society was listening — cabdrivers were listening, it was a national experience,” she said. Professor Porat said that the last major Holocaust-related event in Israel was probably the trial of John Demjanjuk in the late 1980s and his subsequent successful appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court.The venue in Jerusalem where Mr. Eichmann was tried. Even without the tapes, the court had a wealth of documentation and testimony on which to base his conviction.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times“Each few decades you have a different type of Israeli society listening,” she noted. “The youth of today are not the same as in previous decades.”The documentary also examines the interests of the Israeli and German leaderships at a time of growing cooperation, and how they might have influenced the court proceedings.It asserts that David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli prime minister at the time, preferred the tapes not to be heard because of embarrassing details that could emerge regarding a former Nazi who was working in the German chancellor’s bureau, and because of the divisive affair of Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian Jew who helped many Jews to safety but was also accused of collaborating with Mr. Eichmann.Hearing the tapes now, the unambiguous confessions of Mr. Eichmann are startling.“It’s a difficult thing that I am telling you,” Mr. Eichmann says in the recording, “and I know I will be judged for it. But I cannot tell you otherwise. It’s the truth. Why should I deny it?”“Nothing annoys me more,” he added, “than a person who later denies the things he has done.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: Macy’s Fireworks and ‘America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston’

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      The annual fireworks display airs on NBC. And a new outdoor adventure series has its debut on PBS.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 4-10. Details and times are subject to change.MondayMACY’S 4TH OF JULY FIREWORKS SPECTACULAR 8 p.m. on NBC. The “Today” show anchors Craig Melvin and Dylan Dreyer return for a second time to host the 46th edition of the annual fireworks display. Viewers will have a front row look at explosions of color and sound against the backdrop of New York City’s summer skyline, with musical performances by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pitbull, and the cast of the Broadway show “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” plus other special guests. An encore presentation will follow at 10 p.m.TuesdayBaratunde Thurston in “America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston.”Twin Cities PBS/Part2 PicturesAMERICA OUTDOORS WITH BARATUNDE THURSTON 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In the premiere episode of this six-part outdoor adventure show, the writer and comedian Baratunde Thurston explores Death Valley in California, introducing viewers to some of the people who inhabit that sweltering region — including an ultramarathoner who runs in the heat and an elder of the Timbisha Shoshone tribe. “This show is about breaking expectations,” Thurston, who is Black, said in a recent interview with The New York Times. When Thurston hears someone mention the outdoors, he has “a white guy in mind, with a beard, and he’s looking off into the distance, having just conquered something,” he explained. “And we did spend some time with people like that, but we also spent time with the original people on this land. It was a beautiful privilege that I got to interview people from three different Indigenous nations.” At 10 p.m., PBS will premiere another expectations-breaking travel program, THE GREAT MUSLIM AMERICAN ROAD TRIP, in which the rapper Mona Haydar and her husband, Sebastian Robins, who are both Muslim, drive along Route 66 and explore the history of American Muslims going back to the 1800s. In a recent column, The Times television critic Mike Hale named the series one of 27 shows to watch this summer.WednesdayOSCAR MICHEAUX: THE SUPERHERO OF BLACK FILMMAKING (2021) 8 p.m. on TCM. Directed by Francesco Zippel, this documentary presents the life and work of Oscar Micheaux, a pioneer of the Black film industry. In a New York Times series of obituaries dedicated to African American figures the paper had originally overlooked, Monica Drake wrote that Micheaux “made you want to soak up the exuberance he clearly felt in delivering a whole new way of telling stories.” The 40 or so films that Micheaux wrote, directed and produced from 1919 to 1948, Drake continued, carried with them “the added excitement of Black characters doing things that at the time seemed unthinkable onscreen.” The documentary will be followed at 10 p.m. by one of Micheaux’s movies, THE SYMBOL OF THE UNCONQUERED (1920), a silent film in which a Black heiress fights off the Ku Klux Klan to save her land.Thursday2022 NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE DRAFT — ROUND 1 7 p.m. on ESPN. The N.H.L. draft is set to take place this year on July 7-8 in Montreal. In a three-hour special presentation of the annual meeting — in which every franchise team selects the rights to available ice hockey players — the Montreal Canadiens, who won the 2022 N.H.L. draft lottery, will pick first overall, followed by the New Jersey Devils and the Arizona Coyotes.FridayGiorgio Tsoukalos in “Ancient Aliens.”Mason Poole/A+E NetworksANCIENT ALIENS 9 p.m. on History Channel. “Ancient Aliens,” one of History Channel’s longest-running shows, theorizes that extraterrestrials have visited Earth for millions of years. In Friday night’s episode, the show’s host, Giorgio Tsoukalos, looks back at some of the structures the series has visited all over the world — structures that, in his mind, provide proof of extraterrestrial contact. In 2018, on an assignment for The Times, Steven Kurutz went to meet fans of the show at AlienCon, a three-day gathering for “Ancient Aliens” devotees, writing that only two hours into the conference, “500 years of accepted history and science were already being tossed out.”THE GREAT AMERICAN RECIPE 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In this reality competition show, home cooks from different regions of the United States showcase their signature dishes and compete to win the national search for the “Great American Recipe.” In the episode airing on Friday, “Love Language,” each of the eight remaining cooks will share a comfort food inspired by a loved one — from first-date meals to family favorites passed on through generations.SaturdayBONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) 8 p.m. on TCM. Directed by Arthur Penn, this classic crime film dramatizes the history of the real-life bank robbers Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway), including the shooting and robbing spree they went on across the South during the Great Depression. In a 2007 article, The Times’s co-chief film critic A.O. Scott called the couple’s legend “a morality tale in which the wild energies of youth defeat the stale certainties of age, and freedom triumphs over repression.” The critic Bosley Crowther in his 1967 review, however, chided the film as a “cheap piece of baldfaced slapstick comedy,” adding that its “blending of farce with brutal killings is as pointless as it is lacking in taste.”SundayA scene from “Patagonia: Life on the Edge of the World.”CNNPATAGONIA: LIFE ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 9 p.m. on CNN. In this series premiere, the Chilean-born actor Pedro Pascal (known for his role as Oberyn Martell on “Game of Thrones”) narrates journeys through the Patagonia region of South America. Across six episodes, the series takes audiences across windblown deserts, ancient forests and the high peaks of the Andes. With assistance from local experts, each episode showcases the region’s mammals, birds and insects — and the scientists who study them — along with populations that have evolved to live in these environments.WHO IS GHISLAINE MAXWELL? 9:02 p.m. on Starz. The finale of this three-part documentary series, directed by Erica Gornall, tries to uncover the descent of Ghislaine Maxwell. An Oxford-educated socialite, Maxwell was convicted in December of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to groom underage girls, and was sentenced last month to 20 years in prison for aiding in Epstein’s abuse. More

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      Stephen Colbert Reflects on This Year in the Supreme Court

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      Colbert referred to the court’s year of bold rulings as “a real roller-coaster ride, in that I am nauseous and scared we’re all going to die.”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.Environmental HazardThe Supreme Court held the last session of its term on Thursday and announced yet another controversial decision. This time, the court ruled to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants.Stephen Colbert referred to the court’s year of bold calls as “a real roller-coaster ride, in that I am nauseous and scared we’re all going to die.”“Today was the final day of the Supreme Court’s current term and I gotta say, thank god. This must be how the Jets feel when halftime finally arrives: [imitating a Jets player] ‘Well, at least we get 15 minutes when they can’t kick our [expletive]!’” — SETH MEYERS“What are you thinking, Supreme Court? It’s the Environmental Protection Agency — if they can’t limit the emissions, then the agency can’t protect the environment. They’re going to have to change what the ‘P’ stands for — maybe ‘Environmental Punch-Dolphins-in-the-Taint Agency.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“With these maniacs in charge, our only hope is that the smokestacks put on a condom.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to protect the environment? So what is their job now?”— TREVOR NOAH“And by the way, by the way, just so you understand, this ruling might not just be about the carbon emissions. A lot of experts believe the logic of today’s ruling makes it harder for the government to regulate anything unless Congress specifically passes a law to do it. Because you see, right now, a lot of regulations are made by agencies, like — like the F.D.A. They will handle food, you know? The C.D.C. with public health; the B.R.B., with ignoring text messages.” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, Justice Jackson made history as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, and the first person to make people cheer for the Supreme Court in the past two weeks.” — JIMMY FALLON“Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in today as the Supreme Court’s 116th justice — and then Clarence Thomas dissented against that, too.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Vasectomy Edition)“With contraception in the judicial cross hairs, folks are taking their genitals into their own hands, with men rushing to get vasectomies — and then very slowly walking home from them.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“According to one urologist, before the Supreme Court’s ruling he received four or five vasectomy requests a day. But since the decision, that number has spiked to 12 to 18. Makes sense. The most effective forms of birth control for men are abstinence and vasectomies. They have a similar result, but there’s a vas deferens.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’ve never personally performed a vasectomy, but I’d like to try my very first one on Samuel Alito.” — CHELSEA HANDLER“Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, urologists have reportedly seen an uptick in requests for vasectomies. And this is weird — from women: [imitating woman] ‘His name is Dave — I’ll bring him in.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingJames Corden tried his hand at being the president’s assistant on Thursday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutOur list of 12 books to read in July includes a tender coming-of-age memoir by Isaac Fitzgerald, a biography of Vladimir V. Putin and novels from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Bolu Babalola and Daniel Nieh. More

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      In ‘Stranger Things,’ He Delivers Pizza and Stoned Comic Relief

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      Eduardo Franco, who joined the Netflix hit this season, has carved out a role as the show’s addled but reliably hilarious tension-release valve.The “Stranger Things” gang in Lenora Hills, Calif., is in danger — shots are being fired, and an agent is bleeding out. The camera switches abruptly to a view of an unknowing Argyle, played by Eduardo Franco, pulling up to the Byerses’ home as the catchy reggae hit “Pass the Dutchie” blares from his pizza delivery van.“Byers man, having a party and not inviting me, man?” he says. “That is so not cool.”As the group’s wheelman who “smokes smelly plants,” as Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) puts it, Argyle serves as comic relief in the show’s most horrifying season, his lighthearted energy offsetting the dark forces bedeviling the gang.“Argyle delivers pizzas and he dwells in the psychedelics sometimes,” Franco said in a recent video interview. “That’s the perfect combination: to always have hot and ready food, and a little tree.”As one of the most prominent cast additions in Season 4 — the final episodes arrive Friday on Netflix — Franco has carved out a role as the show’s addled but reliably hilarious tension-release valve. But Argyle transcends the stoner-pal stereotype and adds a little heart to the story as well, primarily in the form of his sweet friendship with Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) — though admittedly this often involves the duo being stoned out of their minds.Franco’s most prominent role before Argyle came in Olivia Wilde’s coming-of-age comedy “Booksmart,” as a 20-year-old high school senior named Theo who was recruited to code for Google. That performance led to his current gig — Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler in “Stranger Things,” saw Franco in the movie and suggested him for the role.Franco spoke from Biarritz, France, where he was visiting as part of a “Stranger Things” branding partnership with the surf culture label Quiksilver, which supplied much of Argyle’s wardrobe. In conversation, he was clearly more astute than his character but similarly funny and informal, indulging in f-bombs as freely as Argyle does his smelly plants.In the interview, Franco discussed his inspirations for the character and “marinating in the awkwardness” that comes with life as the show’s designated burnout. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was it about Argyle’s character that appealed to you?I loved that I could hopefully bring a breath of fresh air to the chaos that ensues in the show. It tends to get crazy, and I was hoping I could serve as “let’s laugh it off now, because I’ve been tense for the last 45 minutes.”Argyle provides reliable comic relief, but he transcends the stoner-pal stereotype.NetflixDid you take inspiration from any past cinematic potheads?Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” is always in the back of my mind. My initial approach was to just completely be blown out of my mind all the time — as the character, not Eduardo the actor! I wanted Argyle to be completely clueless: When someone says “Oh my god, Argyle, we gotta get out of here!” I’ll be like, “Huh?” But I know that for the sake of the energy and the adrenaline in the scenes, that wouldn’t always work.How old is the van you drive in the show?It was touchy, an 80-something. I was taught how to drive that van by this professional stunt driver — I’d never driven a stick shift before and it was the worst thing to learn on, because it was just so old. But he was always in the van with me when I was driving, hiding in the car just in case.Was there a scene that was particularly fun to film?The dinner table scene was my personal favorite. Eleven is bummed out. Mike is also concerned. Joyce and Murray [played by Winona Ryder and Brett Gelman] are lying about going to Alaska. And me and Jonathan are blown out of our minds.It was so fun sitting there, marinating in the awkwardness. When it was time for me and Charlie to do our lines, sometimes we would stall while everyone was waiting for us, and we’d be sitting there just eating slowly. It was hilarious, and it was awesome to be able to get Brett and Winona to laugh. I love going to work and making people laugh — the camera man, the crew, the people hauling things up and down all day. And everything felt so organic, sharing the screen with Charlie, Finn and everyone.What did Argyle’s relationship with Jonathan bring to the show’s dynamic?Jonathan is in pain. I think they became instant friends because Jonathan needed a set of ears, and Argyle happened to be right there. Argyle’s character is what we all wish we could be: completely judgment-free. He’s there to have a good time with his bud, and to listen to Jonathan and help him out, no matter what he says.Do you think Argyle is capable of handling whatever danger is coming his way?I can’t tell you anything, but geez, he’s out of his mind for sure. Poor guy.“I loved that I could hopefully bring a breath of fresh air to the chaos that ensues in the show,” Franco said.Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesHow has joining an enormous global phenomenon like “Stranger Things” changed your life?At the Season 4 premiere in New York, when we sat down to screen the first episode, I got mad emotional and started crying in my seat. I was glad it was dark and nobody could see anything. To be a part of something this massive was overwhelming, and I hope people can accept my character as a new guy in the show. I hope he does serve his purpose as a breath of fresh air from all the crazy madness.Have you started getting recognized in public?Yes! For an example, when I got to France last week, I was riding a bike down the street to grab some stuff from a market. My bike had no brakes, and as I’m pulling up, I put my feet down to try to stop, and there was this guy pointing and laughing. Then he double-takes and he was like, “You’re the guy from ‘Stranger Things’? What are you doing here, man?” I was like, “I came to get some chocolate croissants and an adapter to plug my phone charger in the wall.” It was so funny, but that’s just how massive this show is.A series like this generally provides a significant career boost. What kinds of things do you hope to work on in the future?I got a couple movies under my belt, but to be in a movie where people are going to the theater and I’m rockin’ people’s socks off is my dream. I don’t know if that era is already out the window, but I just recently watched “Top Gun,” and it was amazing. So I have hope.And I’d love to be a part of creating the projects, but I don’t know necessarily how to do all that yet. I’m trying to figure all this stuff out. I don’t know a [expletive] thing, but we’re all learning. More