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      Vangelis, Composer Best Known for ‘Chariots of Fire,’ Dies at 79

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      A master of the synthesizer, he won an Oscar for that film’s score, and his memorable theme song became a No. 1 pop hit.Vangelis, the Greek film composer and synthesizer virtuoso whose soaring music for “Chariots of Fire,” the 1981 movie about two British runners in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, won the Academy Award for best original score, died on Tuesday in Paris. He was 79.The cause was heart failure, said Lefteris Zermas, a frequent collaborator.A self-taught musician, Vangelis (pronounced vang-GHELL-iss), who was born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, recorded solo albums and wrote music for television and for films including “Blade Runner” (1982), “Missing” (1982) and “1492: Conquest of Paradise” (1992). But he remains best known for scoring “Chariots of Fire.”The most familiar part of that score — modern electronic music composed for a period film — was heard during the opening credits: a blend of acoustic piano and synthesizer that provided lush, pulsating accompaniment to the sight of about two dozen young men running in slow motion on a nearly empty beach, mud splattering their white shirts and shorts, pain and exhilaration creasing their faces.Vangelis’s music became as popular as the film itself, directed by Hugh Hudson, which won four Oscars, including best picture.The opening song, also called “Chariots of Fire,” was released as a single and spent 28 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, including a week at No. 1. The soundtrack album remained on the Billboard 200 chart for 30 weeks and spent four weeks in the top spot.Vangelis said the score immediately came to him as he watched the film in partly edited form.“I try to put myself in the situation and feel it,” he told The Washington Post in 1981. “I’m a runner at the time, or in the stadium, or alone in the dressing room … and then I compose … and the moment is fruitful and honest, I think.”Vangelis recorded a track with 25 children from the Orleans Infant School in Twickenham, England, for a 1979 single, “The Long March.”Fred Mott/Getty ImagesHe was working at the time in his London studio with a Yamaha CS-80 synthesizer.“It’s the most important synthesizer in my career and the best analog synthesizer design there has ever been,” he told Prog, an alternative music website, in 2016, adding, “It’s the only synthesizer I could describe as being a real instrument.”For “Blade Runner,” a science-fiction film noir set in a futuristic Los Angeles, Vangelis created a score to match the director Ridley Scott’s dystopian vision. He augmented the CS-80 synthesizer, which produced the sounds of horns and bass, with an electric piano and a second synthesizer that emulated strings.“What interested me the most for this film was the atmosphere and the general feeling, rather than the distinct themes,” he said on a fan site, Nemo Studios, named for the studio in London that he built and for many years worked out of. “The visual atmosphere of the film is unique, and it is that I tried to enhance as much as I could.”The “Blade Runner” soundtrack album was not released until 1994, but it was well received. Zac Johnson of Allmusic wrote that “the listener can almost hear the indifferent winds blowing through the neon and metal landscapes of Los Angeles in 2019.”Vangelis at the French Culture Ministry in Paris in 1992.Georges Bendrihem/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesVangelis was born on March 29, 1943, in Agria, Greece, and grew up in Athens. He started playing piano at 4 and gave his first public performance two years later. He did not have much training and never learned to read music.“Music goes through me,” he told The Associated Press in 1982. “It’s not by me.”In the 1960s, he played organ with the Forminx, a Greek rock band. He left Greece for Paris in 1967 after the military coup there.Vangelis was a founder of Aphrodite’s Child, a progressive rock band that had hit singles in Europe and enjoyed some success on FM radio in the United States. The band released a few albums, including “666,” which was inspired by the Book of Revelations. When Aphrodite’s Child broke up, he moved to London in 1974.In the 1970s he began composing music for television shows like the French documentary series “L’Apocalypse des Animaux” (1973), as well as working on solo albums and film projects. Music from his album “China” was used by Mr. Scott in the memorable 1979 “Share the Fantasy” commercial for Chanel No. 5.He also became friendly with Jon Anderson, the lead vocalist of the British prog-rock band Yes. Vangelis was invited to replace the keyboardist Rick Wakeman when he left the band, but he turned down the offer. He and Mr. Anderson subsequently collaborated, as Jon and Vangelis, on four albums, including “The Friends of Mr. Cairo,” between 1980 and 1991.Vangelis’s music was also heard on the scientist Carl Sagan’s 1980 TV series, “Cosmos.”Information on survivors was not immediately available.Among the films Vangelis scored after “Chariots of Fire” were “Antarctica” (1983), a Japanese movie about scientists on an expedition; “The Bounty” (1984), with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson; Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” (2004), about the Macedonian king; and “El Greco” (2007), a Greek film about the artist.He also composed music for spectacles like the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and the 2002 World Cup. And in 2001 he recorded a choral symphony, “Mythodea,” which he had adapted from earlier work, at the Temple of Zeus in Athens to commemorate NASA’s Odyssey mission to Mars.“I made up the name Mythodea from the words myth and ode,” Vangelis said in an interview for NASA’s website in 2001. “And I felt in it a kind of shared or common path with NASA’s current exploration of the planet. Whatever we use as a key — music, mythology, science, mathematics, astronomy — we are all working to decode the mystery of creation, searching for our deepest roots.”Vangelis performed in concert with a choir in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1991.Rob Verhorst/Redferns) More

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      ‘Pistol’ Mini-Series Captures the Anarchy in the Sex Pistols

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      ‘Pistol,’ a new mini-series directed by Danny Boyle, is based on a memoir by the punk band’s bassist and founder, Steve Jones.LONDON — “Are we doing any spitting?” asked a man in the crowd at the 100 Club, a small, red-walled underground space, redolent of spilled beer, cigarette smoke and a thousand lost nights, just off London’s Oxford Street.Yes, there would be spitting. The club was the setting for an early Sex Pistols gig, which last June was being recreated for “Pistol,” a six-part series about the British band, directed by Danny Boyle and streaming on Hulu in the United States and Disney+ in other territories, starting May 31.The Sex Pistols were the “philosophers and the dress code” of the punk revolution, said Boyle, who seemed to be everywhere on set, talking to the extras about crowd behavior, checking cameras and peering intently at monitors as the actors performed the song “Bodies” and the audience went wild.“I tried to make the series in a way that was chaotic and true to the Pistols’ manifesto,” Boyle said in a recent interview. That meant taking an experimental approach to filming: “We would just run whole scenes, whole performances, without knowing if we had captured the ‘right’ shot or not. It’s everything you’ve been taught not to do.”Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who plays Malcolm McLaren, the band’s manager, with virtuosic panache, said Boyle’s approach was unlike anything he had previously experienced on a set. “You felt, this could go wrong, but you could trust in Danny and dive in and experiment — very Sex Pistols!”Before filming began, the actors playing the members of the Sex Pistols spent two months in “band camp,” with a daily routine of music lessons, vocal coaching and movement practice. Miya Mizuno/FXThe result is a charged, visceral, Cubist portrait of the flamboyant rise and explosive fall of the Sex Pistols, whose brief existence from 1975 to 1978 made punk rock a worldwide phenomenon and whose anarchic songs (“God Save the Queen,” “Pretty Vacant”) became anthems for the disaffected.The series, written by Craig Pearce, is based on the memoir “Tales of a Lonely Boy” by Steve Jones, the band’s guitarist. But Boyle said that although Jones’s story was “a wonderful way in,” he and Pearce had tried to paint a composite picture of the entire group, and the ’70s world from which it emerged. (The band originally comprised Jones, the singer John Lydon, known as Johnny Rotten, the drummer Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock on bass, replaced in 1977 by Sid Vicious.)The first episode opens with a montage of archival footage: The Queen waving politely to the crowd; a scene from the slapstick “Carry On” movies; David Bowie performing; striking workers and garbage piled in the streets. When we meet Steve (Toby Wallace), he is busy stealing sound equipment from a Bowie gig. (The singer’s lipstick is still on the microphone.)Steve and his bandmates are angry, bored, and “trying to scrape enough together for another pint,” he tells them as they discuss what their group should wear. “So, no suits?” asks the hapless Wally, who soon gets booted from the band.“It’s hard to overestimate how class-ridden and moribund British society was for these guys,” said Pearce, who met Jones, Cook and other figures close to the band before writing most of the script in his native Australia during the first months of the pandemic.“The promise of the Swinging Sixties didn’t deliver; rock ’n’ roll freedom didn’t happen for most kids,” Pearce said. “There was a feeling that if you were born into a certain class, you couldn’t escape. You had to accept what had been handed to you.”Then, he said, came “this group of kids who said, you are sleepwalking through life.”“I tried to make the series in a way that was chaotic and true to the Pistols’ manifesto,” said Danny Boyle, who directed “Pistol.”Miya Mizuno/FXBoyle, he added, was always his “dream director” for the series. “We couldn’t believe it when he immediately said he wanted to do it.”It turned out that Boyle couldn’t quite believe it either. “I am very music-driven, but I never imagined doing the Pistols,” he said. “I had followed John Lydon’s career closely, and the hostility he felt for the others wasn’t a secret.” But after reading Pearce’s script, Boyle immediately said yes.“Which was ridiculous,” he said with a laugh, “since I didn’t even know if we would have the music, the most important thing.”Lydon opposed both the use of the Sex Pistols’s music and the series itself, but eventually lost his court case when a judge ruled that the terms of a band agreement gave Cook and Jones a majority vote. Boyle said he had attempted to contact Lydon during the dispute. He added that he hoped the series would “reveal the genius and the humility” in the frontman.Boyle said that while he did extensive reading and research, talking to everyone he could find who had been involved with the band, he ultimately trusted his intuition in formulating an approach to the series.“I grew up in a similar working-class environment to Steve and these guys,” he said. “We are exactly the same age and I am a music obsessive. I had to explain to the actors what the 1970s were like; they just don’t recognize how little stimulation there was, how you waited all week for the lifeline of the New Musical Express to appear on a Thursday!”Before filming began, the actors playing the band members spent two months in “band camp,” with a daily routine of music lessons, vocal coaching and movement practice. Sometimes Boyle would talk to them about the ’70s and show them footage. Then, led by Karl Hyde and Rick Smith from the British electronic music group Underworld, they would spend hours playing together.Boyle said he had mostly avoided casting trained musicians. “I didn’t want anyone locked into an expertise,” he said, adding that Jacob Slater, who plays Cook, was an excellent guitarist, but had to learn drumming.Chrissie Hynde (Sydney Chandler), left, and Vivienne Westwood (Talulah Riley) are two of the memorable female characters in the series. Miya Mizuno/FXHe also decided not to do any postproduction work on the music. “Like the Pistols, we just had to get up and, however imperfect we were, go for it,” said Sydney Chandler, who plays the American singer Chrissie Hynde. Chandler’s character is one of several memorable women in the series, alongside the designer Vivienne Westwood (Talulah Riley), Nancy Spungen (Emma Appleton) and the punk icon Jordan (Maisie Williams).When it came to the band members, “we didn’t want to be tributes or caricatures,” said Anson Boon, who plays Lydon and, like his character, had never sung before. “The Pistols produced a raw, angry wall of sound and we wanted to capture that essence without trying to do an impression.”Playing a character who is also a real person was intimidating but fascinating, said Wallace, who spent time with Jones before filming began. “We talked a lot about his family, then he gave me the first guitar lesson I really had.”The series shows Steve’s unhappy childhood, which Wallace saw as central to Jones’s “anger and frustration,” he said, and led him to create “a band that represents the unrepresented.Working on the series, Boyle said, had made him aware of the Pistols’ importance beyond music. “They were a bunch of working class guys who broke the order of things, more than the Beatles,” he said. “It was especially resonant in the U.K., where the way you were expected to behave was so entrenched.”The Pistols, he added, gave their fans permission to do whatever they wanted, to waste their time however they wanted, to shape their own lives in a singular way.“They gave a sense of purpose to purposelessness,” he said. More

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      Stephen Colbert Waxes Nostalgic About George W. Bush

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      “Dubya and I had so many good times together back at the old ‘Colbert Report,’” he said. “I made so much fun of him, and he gave me so many reasons to do that.” 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.Back to the FutureDuring a speech in Dallas on Wednesday, former President George W. Bush misspoke while talking about Russia’s war in Ukraine, referring to it as “a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”On Thursday’s “Late Show,” Stephen Colbert said the slip of the tongue had him feeling “a little nostalgic,” calling Bush “a man who I spent many happy years pretending to like.” (On “The Colbert Report,” his long-running previous show, Colbert assumed the persona of an egotistical conservative TV commentator.)“Dubya and I, for about 10 years, had so many good times together back at the old ‘Colbert Report.’ I made so much fun of him, and he gave he so many reasons to do that.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Jiminy Christmas! The one phrase he definitely should never utter for the rest of his life. It’s like he’s thinking about it all the time, and it just popped out.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Oof. That’s like your wife asking if you’re hungry and saying, ‘I could cheat. I mean eat. I could eat with my mistress.’” — SETH MEYERS“I hate when I mix up my unprovoked invasions.” — JAMES CORDEN“Maybe Bush is going to start admitting to everything he’s been holding back: [imitating Bush] ‘Also, I just want to say: My grandkids are the ones who paint the watercolors; Dick Cheney is a Terminator sent from the future; and there are no human-animal hybrids. I saw the Phillie Phanatic with his head off, and I freaked out.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Tanking Stock Edition)“Some business news, it’s been a rough couple of months for the economy and I saw that yesterday was the stock market’s worst day in over two years. Yeah, stocks fell so fast, the oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling at CNBC.” — JIMMY FALLON“Experts say if this keeps up, every Merrill Lynch office is going to become a Spirit Halloween.” — JIMMY FALLON“Things are so bad, they replaced the stock exchange closing bell with the losing sound from ‘Price is Right.’” — JIMMY FALLON“The Dow took a drubbing after investors were alarmed by disappointing earnings from Target, Walmart and Lowe’s. There’s only one solution: release the strategic reserve of dads running little errands. Go get some batteries, guys! Buy some spackle! The little bucket — the old one’s probably dried out by now. Just putter around the paint aisle and pick out swatches. She says she wants yellow, but you don’t know which one! Remember, satin shine! It should glow, but not glisten, OK? It should have sheen, but not shimmer. So just buy one can of each. Your country needs you!” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingDesus and Mero threw Rihanna a baby shower, with help from the celebrity party planner Karleen Roy and the CBS newscaster Maurice DuBois.Also, Check This OutFrom left, Harry Hadden-Paton, Laura Carmichael, Tuppence Middleton and Allen Leech in “Downton Abbey: A New Era.”Ben Blackall/Focus Features“Downton Abbey: A New Era” is familiar territory for fans missing Lady Mary and company. More

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      David Fincher Tries Animation in ‘Love, Death + Robots’

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      The director made his first animated short for the new season of this Netflix anthology. “It was an incredibly freeing, eye-opening, mind-expanding way to interface with a story,” he said.Before David Fincher became an A-list director and multiple Oscar and Emmy nominee — lauded for of-the-moment films like “Fight Club” and “The Social Network” and the TV series “House of Cards” and “Mindhunter” — he was one of the co-founders of the production company Propaganda Films. Propaganda was known for its visually dazzling TV commercials and music videos, and Fincher honed his craft in dozens of miniature movies made in myriad styles.Yet until recently, he had never directed animation, even though he loves the medium so much that he signed on a few years ago to be an executive producer of the Netflix anthology animation series “Love, Death + Robots,” which returns for its third season on Friday.“Love, Death + Robots” sprung from the ashes of a project Fincher had been developing with the “Deadpool” director Tim Miller since the late 2000s: a revival of “Heavy Metal,” the animated movie series inspired by the adults-only science-fiction and fantasy comics magazine. The first season of “Love, Death + Robots” debuted in 2019, featuring 18 episodes (ranging in length from 6 to 17 minutes) that adapted short stories by genre favorites like Peter F. Hamilton, John Scalzi and Joe Lansdale. An eight-episode second season followed in 2021.Fincher, left, directed the short under Covid protocols. “I didn’t quite realize how much I communicate through my face,” he said.NetflixDespite his involvement, Fincher never made a short of his own until Season 3, when he and the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (who wrote Fincher’s crime thriller “Seven”) tackled a tale by the British science-fiction author Neal Asher called “Bad Travelling.” Set on the high seas on a distant planet, the story follows a merchant ship as it is tormented by a giant, intelligent crab that manipulates the crew members and then eliminates them one by one. Fincher described the short as “like a David Lean movie crossed with ‘Ten Little Indians.’”“Bad Travelling” was made via motion-capture, a computer-aided style of animation in which actors perform on a set and their facial expressions and gestures are mapped directly onto their animated characters. Fincher worked closely with Miller (who co-founded Blur Studio, the special effects and animation company that produced “Bad Travelling”) and Jennifer Yuh Nelson, an artist and filmmaker (“Kung Fu Panda 2”), who is the supervising director for “Love, Death + Robots.”In a video interview last week, Fincher discussed the challenges and pleasures of making “Bad Travelling” and the series as a whole, and how he carried his detail-oriented directorial approach to this new medium. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Including this volume’s episodes, there have now been three Neal Asher stories adapted for “Love, Death + Robots.” What is it about Asher that suits this show?Well, “Bad Travelling” was part of our original pitch to do this. We’ve had these giant four-foot by six-foot blown-up copies of really beautiful production art sitting around in the conference room for, good God, 12 years or something. Finally, somebody had to make it. That honor fell to me.Neal is a favorite of Tim’s, and Tim does most of our curation. He has a list of, like, 350 short stories he’s always wanted to see animated. Neal was one of the first examples that Tim brought up to me of the kind of stuff that’s available out there, to say, “OK, I think this is sustainable.”“Bad Travelling” was made with motion-capture, a computer-aided style of animation in which actors’ facial expressions and gestures are mapped onto their characters. NetflixThat’s an instructive way to think about this series: not just as an anthology of adult animation but also as an anthology of science-fiction stories of varying lengths and approaches.It’s a very difficult thing to write a short story. It’s an art in and of itself to, in the broadest of brushstrokes, bring a reader into an already populated world, make us understand as much as we need to know about the geopolitics or whatever, and then get on with it. It’s what I’ve done making television commercials. That’s a great sandbox to do something with one idea for 30 seconds or two ideas for 60 seconds. I’ve done music videos, which is like a mélange of ideas that should hopefully hang together in some abstract way over 3 to 4 minutes.The most difficult thing is to acknowledge the integers. When you have 19 minutes, it’s a very different thing than when you have 22 minutes. You have to force yourself with this material to be terse.Does your job as a director change, depending on what you’re making?I think any card-carrying member of the D.G.A. knows the acknowledged formula: You want to come into every scene as late as possible, get out as soon as possible and make your point. That can be applied to a lot of different kinds of directing. You can bore people at 30 seconds. I’ve done that. You can thrill people at 2 hours and 45 minutes, and you can bore people at 2 hours and 45 minutes. I’ve done both of those.I don’t see any of this stuff as slumming. I don’t think of directing television commercials or directing television episodes as a lesser form of directing. And to be honest, that has made my shows like “House of Cards” and “Mindhunter” slightly more expensive than the normal for television programing. Most people think of television as, you know, 7 to 10 days of shooting, to produce an hourlong episode. I’ve yet to be able to do it in that time frame. I’m a slow learner, I admit it.What did you learn from directing animation?When I’m setting up to do a master, I’m thinking in terms of, “If this is going to be an over-the shoulder shot, I either have to get this person away from the door frame, or I have to tell the key grip to go get a chain saw.” But in [computer-generated imagery], that kind of stuff doesn’t enter into it. The space is entirely plastic. It was an incredibly freeing, eye-opening, mind-expanding way to interface with a story because so much of live-action storytelling is enduring or working around practical things.Of course, when you can change anything at a later date, you also have to ask yourself, “How far am I going to kick this can?” You can open up these files and go, “I want the chin to do this, and I want the ears here.” You can modify all this stuff ad infinitum. For somebody who likes to polish as much as I do, at some point they just have to pull it from your cold, dead hands.Early production art for the short “felt ‘Thief of Baghdad’-adjacent,” Fincher said. “I felt the world itself needed to be a little less phantasmagoric and a little more ‘Deadliest Catch.’”NetflixWith motion capture, is part of your job as a director also to convince the actors that they’re really on a ship, in fear for their lives?Even though you have people in skintight Lycra with Ping-Pong balls hanging off them, you still have to say things like, “OK, in this scene it is the sunset of the third day.” I was working with people from all different kinds of performance-based acting — we had musicians, we had singers. It was an interesting group. And they had no issue being in a leotard, going: “OK, so then I’m fighting the giant crab over here. How big is it? Like two Range Rovers side by side? Where are the eyes? The eyes are on stalks?” You’re attempting to impart this thing that’s totally ridiculous.But honestly, none of that was as difficult for me as being in the middle of Covid and wearing glasses with goggles and a mask and visor. I didn’t quite realize how much I communicate through my face — a lot of director-actor relationships aren’t about giving a line reading but through the way that you interact and the nonverbal cues. The pandemic gear got in the way of all that.How much input did you have on the visual design? Was there any illustrator or director you were looking to for inspiration?Tim and Blur had been working on the story for a long time, and they had a lot of production art that felt “Thief of Baghdad”-adjacent. I felt the world itself needed to be a little less phantasmagoric and a little more “Deadliest Catch.” My whole thing was I wanted the people to be at risk of being washed off the deck at any moment. They’re either going to get chewed apart by these blunt-nosed sharks, or they’re going to be dismembered by these pincers of these giant crustaceans.It must be easier to rip characters apart and spill their guts when you’re working in animation.Yes, and on the water! Like Jim Cameron and Kevin Costner will tell you, there are such things as forces of nature. If you ever do a story that takes place on the high seas, do it in C.G., because you’re not going to be chasing the sun, and you won’t be worried about people being crushed between boats or drowning. And you’ll never be waiting around for the wave machine.Is there anyone you’d like to bring into the fold if you get to make a Season 4?There are a lot, but look, this show takes a while. This episode I did took, like, 18 months. We originally started off wanting to do this with Ridley Scott, Jim Cameron, Zack Snyder, Gore Verbinski. So many friends of mine I went to and asked, “Would you want to do something like this?,” and they were like, “Yes!” But the reality is that the only way this show is affordable is if the people who are making it don’t mind losing the money they could be making doing something else.Are we hoping that the world embraces this show on a heretofore unseen level, making it a no-brainer to increase the subsidy for it? Yeah, that would be great. Until that happens, it’s hard to get the director of “Avatar” or the director of “Pirates of the Caribbean” to drop everything they’re doing and come and play with us. More

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      Seth Meyers: Madison Cawthorn Is Gone, but Soon Forgotten

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      “Hopefully, he’ll learn his lesson: Next time you get invited to a cocaine orgy, just go,” Meyers joked.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.UninvitedMadison Cawthorn, a representative from North Carolina, lost his re-election bid in the state’s primary on Tuesday.“Hopefully, he’ll learn his lesson: Next time you get invited to a cocaine orgy, just go,” Seth Meyers joked.“You know, guys, politics is a rough-and-tumble business, and D.C. can be a cruel town. Just when you feel like you’re making headway in Congress, you’re unceremoniously forced out by a cruel and unforgiving system of cutthroats and back stabbers. And that’s exactly what happened last night when one of our nation’s most committed public servants, a camera-shy policy wonk who is laser-focused on serving the greater good, lost his bid for re-election. Oh, wait, I think I read that whole thing wrong. Oh, I read every word wrong. It was just Madison Cawthorn!” — SETH MEYERS“Oh, Madison, you may be gone, but soon you’ll be forgotten. At least now he’ll have more time for his other job, starring as the, I don’t know, bad-boy villain in a CW drama? He looks like he should be next to a locker threatening to tell Pacey about Dawson’s relationship with Joey.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Pennsylvania Primary Edition)“The results are in, and America has upheld its proud tradition of not knowing who won.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yeah, as of right now, Dr. Oz is in first place, David McCormick is in second, and the ‘Cash me outside’ girl is in third.” — JIMMY FALLON“Last night, McCormick’s chief strategist tweeted, ‘Based on how many uncounted absentee ballots there are and the margin by which Dave has won them so far, that’s why we are confident of victory,’ while an adviser for Dr. Oz pointed to uncounted ballots in Philadelphia and declared, ‘It’s a jump ball,’ which, I will remind you, is how they eventually decided Bush v. Gore.”— STEPHEN COLBERT“And while Dr. Oz is in the lead for the Republican nomination, more votes have to be counted because the race is still too close to call. This is kind of great. I mean, for once it’s nice to have a doctor waiting for us.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers” co-stars John Mulaney and Andy Samberg guest-hosted Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” as the host recovered from a second bout of Covid-19.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightJoJo Siwa of “So You Think You Can Dance” will appear on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutBilly Eichner filming a scene for “Bros.” “I’m so excited to finally be able to play a three-dimensional human being,” he said.Nicole Rivelli/Universal Pictures“Bros” is a studio-made rom-com written by and starring gay people that doesn’t recycle straight tropes. More

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      Marty Callner Might Be the Most Influential Comedy Director

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      Marty Callner made the first modern special, setting the template still in use. (He was also key to hair-metal videos. But that’s another story.)Since comedy is often overlooked at the Oscars, why doesn’t it have its own awards show?It’s been tried, but the self-seriousness of such events can be an odd fit. So when Netflix started an awards show celebrating the greats in stand-up — who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame being built at the National Comedy Center — it was inevitable that a participating comic would make fun of the whole thing.At the recent Los Angeles taping of that awards show, “The Hall: Honoring the Greats of Stand-Up,” which premieres on Thursday, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, George Carlin and Robin Williams were inducted with speeches by Dave Chappelle, Chelsea Handler, Jon Stewart and John Mulaney. When Mulaney introduced Williams by reading a letter from the late comic’s daughter, he appeared momentarily emotional before pausing to say: “I don’t want to cry at a fake awards show.”That didn’t sit right with Marty Callner, the show’s co-creator (with Randall Gladstein) and director, who cut that quip in the edit. “It’s real,” he told me in the backyard of his Malibu home. “The Hall” has been a longtime dream of his, an effort to reintroduce classic comedy to younger generations, and an honor that he says comics will appreciate and care about. “These guys are still human beings and they still have egos and they still want a legacy.”John Mulaney inducting Robin Williams into the Hall of Fame on the new special.Terence Patrick/NetflixCallner, 75, has his own complicated relationship with a public legacy since his remarkable career has largely existed in the background. In fact, he might be the most successful director you have never heard of.Over the past five decades, Callner has worked with some of the most famous brand names in popular culture — Madonna, Jerry Seinfeld, the Dallas Cowboys — and was a formative figure at the dawn of two modern art forms: the stand-up special and the music video, neither of which are known for giving much credit to the director. If that weren’t enough innovation, he also created “Hard Knocks,” a hit reality show that for 20 years, turned N.F.L. training camp into a soap opera.“The Hall,” whose inductees were chosen by a panel of comedy industry types like club owners and agents chosen by Callner, is only the latest institution he’s built, but it’s one he speaks about with personal passion, especially since he knew each of the first four comics being inducted. “Stand-up is such a part of my life that I wanted to give back,” he said.Callner was raised by a single parent (his father left when he was 2) in Cincinnati, a midcentury television hub. He credits a 1969 trip on synthetic psilocybin for awakening his previously dormant creativity, started working an entry-level job in live local news and immediately fell in love. He hung around the Cincinnati station at all hours, sponging up shot composition and camera angles. When a director suddenly left one afternoon for a family emergency, Callner got his chance, moving on to direct commercials and Boston Celtics games including their championship season in 1974. His success led to two offers: to work for NBC Sports, a national behemoth, or for a relatively unknown new cable channel called HBO, where he would be able to shape its look and style (and direct live coverage of Wimbledon). Callner bet on the option where he could have more sway. It wouldn’t take long for this to pay off in his big break.Two months after “Saturday Night Live” premiered in 1975, he directed a show that started a tradition that rivals it: “An Evening With Robert Klein” was the first HBO stand-up special. Shelley Berman and Bob Newhart had made specials for television the previous decade, but it was Klein’s hour that pointed the way to the future, even opening with a backstage scene of the comic preparing. This cold open would become such a stand-up special cliché that Callner said he wouldn’t use it again.HBO had a couple of advantages over network television: It presented longer sets, and, critically, comics could curse. The line that Klein cared most about, Callner said, came after he swore: “What a catharsis,” he quipped.Callner zoomed in on him during this moment to emphasize the point.The day after the show premiered, a positive review in The Times described the process of using five cameras to capture an uncensored long-form portrait of the comic as “innovative.”“That changed my life,” Callner said, adding that the article led HBO to sign him up for a series of specials that made the cable channel the central home for this nascent form. He directed the first specials of Robin Williams, Steve Martin and Carlin, who became a good friend and the best man at his wedding. Did Carlin give a speech? “I’m sure he did but I don’t even remember being there,” Callner said, smiling. “It was the 1980s.”The look of these early specials did not draw attention to itself. “I learned the comedy directs me,” he said. “If a comedian is doing something physical, it better be a head-to-toe shot. If he’s making a poignant point, it better be on a close shot. It was reportage. My job was to capture their genius and not take shots that were superfluous. I see all kinds of directors today making this mistake. They are cutting around to show off.”“My job was to capture their genius and not take shots that were superfluous,” Callner said, with an Emmy for “Hard Knocks” on his desk.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesBy the end of the decade, Callner had become bored with specials and excited by a flashier art form in its infancy at another young cable channel, MTV.His first video, Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take it,” was a slapstick production that leaned on his comic background. In it, a boy (played by his son) sends his angry dad out the window thanks to the power of his declaration, “I want to rock!” (which was Callner’s voice dubbed in). This proved to be a major hit and led to directing jobs on hundreds more videos, including 18 with Aerosmith and four with Cher. It was Callner’s idea to put Cher on a cannon on a Navy ship in the video “If I Could Turn Back Time.” Asked why, he said, “It was phallic,” which is hard to argue with.In these early days of MTV, the aesthetic for videos was up for grabs, said Rob Tannenbaum, who co-wrote “I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution” and is an occasional contributor to The Times. He explained, “Devo wanted them to be avant-garde films; Duran Duran wanted them to be Patrick Nagel-style reveries; Marty Callner thought videos should be funny, which proved to be a more durable concept.” He added, “He understood, early on, that videos could be about more than amusement — they could be about branding and even mythology.”To be sure, they were also about scantily clad women (MTV once gave him a note that his video for the Scorpions’ “Big City Nights,” had too many women in bikinis) and hair, lots of it. As much as anyone, Callner created the visuals for the era when rock was dominated by flowing, feathered locks. The secret auteur of the genre known as hair metal was his hairdresser wife of 40 years, Aleeza Callner, who blow-dried the heads of the members of Whitesnake, Poison, Kiss, the Scorpions — not to mention Sam Kinison and Jerry Seinfeld.After a career directing television that tapped into the raw American id, Callner, who said he hated the objectification of women “even though I can’t say I wasn’t culpable,” is now looking at an unlikely new idea. He’s planning a festival called “America’s Wedding” in which 2,000 couples would get married at the same time in Las Vegas.For now, he is focused on “The Hall,” which Netflix aims to make an annual tradition. Callner, who once directed a tribute to Lenny Bruce, said that the influential stand-up received the fifth most votes, and hopes he gets inducted in a future show.Asked if it ever bothers him that his work is so much better known than he is, he said what mattered to him was the final product. “I didn’t become a household name,” he said, in front of a beautiful view of the water, “but I did become the highest paid television director in Hollywood, and the reason is: I made people a lot of money.” More

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      Cristin Milioti Finds Harmony in Fiona Apple and a Location Change

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      The “Palm Springs” actor talks about playing the object of adoration in her HBO Max series, “Made for Love,” and a few of the things she obsesses over herself.Cristin Milioti was certain she was made for “Made for Love.”“I banged on every door for this role, and they were like, ‘Absolutely not, no way, no way, no way, no way,’” she said. “They had a short list of people that I was not anywhere near. I don’t even think I was on a medium list or a long list. I didn’t make any of the lists.”But Milioti was undaunted. And over lunch with Patrick Somerville — a creator of this dark comedy about a tech billionaire’s wife on the lam from the virtual-reality cube in which he’s cloistered her for a decade — she made the hard sell.“I remember saying, ‘Hey, I know that you guys have your sights set on way fancier people,’” said Milioti, who had just wrapped “Palm Springs,” the “Groundhog Day”-esque rom-com with Andy Samberg. “‘But I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that this is exactly what I think this show is, and this is how I would play it.’”When Milioti was offered the part a couple of weeks later, she said, “I don’t think anyone was more shocked than I was.”Season 2, which started April 28 on HBO Max, finds Hazel trapped in a labyrinth of lies, having returned to the cube with her husband (Billy Magnussen) to save the life of her father (Ray Romano).From the moment Hazel popped out of a door in the ground in the show’s first episode — as a reluctant dream girl breaking free of the man who monitors her every move, down to her orgasms — the story line has spoken “to the ways in which I feel like women are forced to perform for so much of their lives,” Milioti said. “Then you hit a breaking point where you suddenly realize that you’ve been performing for an audience that you have no interest in performing for. And you want to scream.”In a video call from Puerto Rico, barely rested after a late-night shoot for the upcoming Peacock romantic thriller “The Resort,” a gorgeously bed-headed Milioti spoke about her favorite food as a Jersey girl, how New York still thrills her and why the best times are all about location, location, location.Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Fiona Apple She has been such a beacon for me my entire life. Her artistry has helped me navigate not only my own personhood, but the world that I walk through. I think she’s unparalleled as a lyricist, and her melodies are like little galaxies. Something that was so incredibly special about this last album [“Fetch the Bolt Cutters”] is that you could tell that that’s what she’d been moving toward her entire career. Every album she releases is astonishing, but this was like her magnum opus. She is a [expletive] North Star, and she has never wavered.2. Graphic Novels I’m an extremely avid reader, but I’d never read a graphic novel. Then for my birthday last year, one of my closest friends got me “Wendy’s Revenge,” in this trilogy by Walter Scott. To me, they open up some other portal in my brain that is wildly soothing and fantastical, because you can pore over the universe of the page. It feels like it exercises some lobe that I didn’t know about, like brain and soul calisthenics.3. Adam McKay’s “Step Brothers” I’ve probably seen “Step Brothers” 25 times, and it’s just so fantastically, gloriously stupid. I think I like it so much because everyone in it is treating it like it’s a prestige drama. There’s no winking at the camera. Kathryn Hahn’s performance is so outrageously funny because she’s playing it like a Greek tragedy. Richard Jenkins is playing it so serious and so is Mary Steenburgen — not to mention Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Adam Scott. It’s like a murderers’ row playing the most absurd concept as if it’s an Oscar film.4. Harmonizing There is something about how we figured out harmonies that chills me. You’re making this sound with someone else where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is the most beautiful form of listening. I was in chorus in high school and we sang “O Magnun Mysterium,” and we were accepted into this choral competition at Riverside Church in Manhattan. I remember us practicing in a hallway. I was a New Jersey teenager, smoking in diners and sort of living a Bruce Springsteen song like, “I can’t wait to get outta this town.” And we all sat in this hallway singing to each other, listening to the sound of each other’s voices and all the social constructs — the fighting, the cliques — melted away. Just a bunch of [expletive] teens from Jersey in this old church, creating something that was so beautiful that we couldn’t believe that it was coming from us. We sang it in this competition, and we were holding each other’s hands, tears streaming down our faces like, “We did it!” Then this show choir from Florida came right after us singing the exact same song. And they annihilated us.5. Wawa Hoagies Wawa was featured heavily on “Mare of Easttown,” and I was like, “Well, well, well, look at her go.” It was like seeing an old friend hit the big time. Wawa is basically a convenience store, like a 7-Eleven, but they make these hoagies, which is a very Jersey thing. I’m pretty sure they’re made from yoga mats. The meat is possibly not meat. It’s like cheese-colored or turkey-colored material. Sadly, I can’t eat them anymore because I’m vegan now. Ironically, they might be vegan because they might all be made of napkins. I have no idea. What goes into these things, it’s unintelligible.6. Crossing over the Manhattan Bridge I have lived in New York for a million years, and when I am in a taxi with the windows down rumbling over the Manhattan Bridge — and I can see the skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty — I can’t believe that I live there after all this time. I always stop everything I’m doing and I just stare out the window at the majesty of where I live, and that the city continues to run and thrive, and it’s been through so much and it holds so much. It’s like a little prayer.7. Amy Morton at the end of Act 2 of “August: Osage County” by Tracy Letts I think I had just dropped out of [New York University] when I saw that play, and I had never seen anything like that. I remember when she turned around — she spins over her shoulder and comes at her mother with her arm pointed — and the way that she bellowed, “I’m running things now!” I still get goose bumps. My skeleton burst into doves. I melted in my seat, like my spirit rose away and was floating at the rafters.8. Traveling Solo I was always very afraid to take solo trips. I have a couple of friends who had done it and I was like, “But what do you do?” And then I took one by myself. After a job, I went to the Adirondacks for a week, and it was incredible. You’re one on one with your own personhood, and parts of your brain and heart open up when it’s just you and your thoughts, walking through the woods. I think it is so valuable. I’ve taken another solo trip since then, to the Galápagos, which I was very nervous about because it’s so far away. But I wanted to do one by myself again, to sort of shake hands with myself and say, “Hello.”9. Blooper Reels It’s like an immediate dose of laughter, Prozac for your brain. I like compilations of people falling down, farts on live TV, all of that. I think the internet is so dangerous, but one part of it that I really like to utilize is being able to go onto YouTube and watch something that makes me laugh so hard that it’s just like a lovely little reset.10. A Location Change I love going out so much, but I really love a location change. I like to go to like a place for dinner, and then you have a location change and you go to a bar, and then you maybe have one more location change for a dessert. It’s like an adventure where I’m like, “What’s going to happen?” It feels like a delightful game of Russian roulette, which is one of the reasons why I love living in New York. It’s just endless possibilities, and there’s something about it that’s very sexy and romantic. It’s effervescent. It’s like if champagne were an activity. More

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      Stephen Colbert Celebrates Sweden and Finland Applying to Join NATO

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      Colbert called the move “good news” based on it being “bad news for Russia.”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.The Swedish Are ComingLeaders from Sweden joined Finland in announcing plans to submit an application for NATO on Tuesday.Stephen Colbert called the announcement “good news” because it’s “bad news for Russia.”“Wow, first Finland, now Sweden. It seems like every day we’re learning about another country we could have sworn was already in NATO.” — SETH MEYERS“Finland and Sweden are very serious about making this official. They each left a toothbrush in NATO’s bathroom already.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“One of Russia’s main goals in invading Ukraine was to weaken NATO. Now, instead, the alliance is ‘on the brink of starting its largest potential expansion in nearly two decades.’ How ironic. It’s — it’s like that O. Henry story where the guy buys his wife combs for her hair, and she joins NATO.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Primary Day Edition)“You can feel the electricity in the air because it is Primary Day all across America. Five states are choosing their party nominees for state and federal office: Pennsylvania, Oregon, Idaho, North Carolina and Kentucky. Or as election experts collectively know them, ‘POINCK.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Ah, yes, the excitement of midterm state primaries. Put the coffee on, honey, it’s gonna be an all-nighter.” — JAMES CORDEN“Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon and Pennsylvania all held primaries today, which, of course, is news to the vast majority of people in Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon and Pennsylvania.” — JAMES CORDEN“One of the most-watched races is in Pennsylvania, where Dr. Oz is trying to win the Republican nomination for senate. My apologies to Dr. Oz, but I can’t cross party lines — I’m a Dr. Phil guy through and through.” — JAMES CORDEN“Because there’s nothing more impressive than being called smart by a man who stared directly at an eclipse.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, referring to Dr. Oz’s touting his endorsement from Donald Trump.The Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon and the “Tonight Show” guest Nick Jonas performed auto-tuned tracks based on topics such as “a Craigslist ad for a roommate.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightSarah Silverman will appear on Wednesday’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”Also, Check This OutA commuter walking past Nick Cave’s video work, “Every One,” which plays every quarter hour and brings the suits to life in motion.Amr Alfiky for The New York TimesThe musician-artist Nick Cave’s “Each One” installation shows Soundsuits “that seem to be in motion, creating visual vortexes, variously spinning and rising or falling,” in the subway under One Times Square. More