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      'The Many Saints of Newark': A Guide to the ‘Sopranos’ Family Tree

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      A guide to the many mobsters of “The Many Saints of Newark” and how they prefigure the characters in the beloved series about New Jersey wiseguys.In the world of “The Sopranos,” there’s family, and then there’s “family” — those hard-won, deep-seated mob ties that make spiritual relations of every member of the Italian American mafia. Over the course of six seasons, that acclaimed HBO drama introduced us to several dozen members of New Jersey’s powerful DiMeo crime family, including its brilliant and fascinating kingpin, Tony Soprano, and the various uncles, cousins, rivals and lovers who fill out the engrossing drama of the character’s fraught, volatile life.“The Many Saints of Newark” is a prequel, set roughly 30 years before the start of the show, beginning in the late 1960s and spanning half a decade. Billed as a Tony Soprano origin story, it instead focuses largely on Dickie Moltisanti, a close friend and associate of the family who, seeing great potential in Tony, takes the young Soprano boy under his wing.“Many Saints” is a treat for “Sopranos” fans, full of subtle references to series lore and answers to longstanding questions, and it’s a delight to see younger versions of familiar faces. But the movie doesn’t make much of an effort to explain characters or their relationships to the uninitiated, and if it’s been a while since your last “Sopranos” binge, you may find it difficult to place each and every member of the family.Before “Many Saints” arrives in cinemas and on HBO Max on Oct. 1, here is a guide to who’s who in the New Jersey mob world.Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini, Michael Gandolfini)“The Sopranos” begins as the respected but beleaguered Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano enters therapy to get a handle on a series of increasingly severe panic attacks. “Many Saints” reveals Tony as a bright, charismatic teenager with ambitions to go to college and avoid the life of crime that is his ultimate destiny. Immortalized by James Gandolfini on the show, he’s played in the prequel by Gandolfini’s real-life son, Michael.In “Many Saints,” Alessandro Nivola plays the father of a key character in “The Sopranos,” Christopher Moltisanti.Warner Bros.Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola)Once an important and admired leader in the Jersey mafia, Dickie Moltisanti is killed long before the events of “The Sopranos,” under circumstances described — though never actually confirmed — as part of a story arc in the show’s fourth season. Dickie is the protagonist of “Many Saints,” and much about the tragedy of his life and death is disclosed in ways that longtime “Sopranos” fans will find thoroughly shocking. Though not family by blood, he’s welcomed as a brother by Junior Soprano and becomes an influential father figure to young Tony.Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli)Born around the time “Many Saints” is set, Christopher appears in the film only briefly, as a baby, in a scene with much foreboding. Son of Dickie and distant cousin of Tony’s wife, Carmela, he’s considered part of the Soprano family, usually referred to as Tony’s nephew. One of the main characters of the series, Christopher is a kind of scrappy ne’er-do-well whom Tony dreams of molding as his protégé — a dream often thwarted, throughout the series, by Chrissy’s tendency to screw up.Michael Gandolfini, left, and Jon Berthal in the prequel.Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros. Giovanni “Johnny Boy” Soprano (Joseph Siravo, Jon Bernthal)Giovanni “Johnny Boy” Soprano, Tony’s father, died of natural causes in the late ’80s, before the events of “The Sopranos,” and is glimpsed in the series only in flashbacks; one of those flashbacks is restaged in “Many Saints,” with Jon Bernthal now playing the Soprano patriarch in place of the show’s Joseph Siravo. A big shot in the mob, he spent much of Tony’s adolescence in prison, entrusting Dickie to look after the boy while he’s inside.Corrado “Junior” Soprano (Dominic Chianese, Corey Stoll)A perennial thorn in Tony’s side, Corrado Soprano, better known as Junior, is Johnny Boy’s brother, and partly helps raise Tony while Johnny Boy is serving time. In “The Sopranos,” Junior (Dominic Chianese) is conniving and always jockeying for power, and as portrayed by Corey Stoll in “Many Saints,” he is no less ruthless or power-hungry as a younger man, to no one’s surprise. His relationship with Tony has been strained ever since he doubted the young Soprano’s capacity to become a varsity athlete.“Hollywood” Dick Moltisanti (Ray Liotta)Dickie’s father, and Christopher’s grandfather, “Hollywood” Dick looms over “Many Saints” with a biting, portentous menace. Although he never appears and virtually never comes up in “The Sopranos,” his actions in the prequel set in motion many of the events that defined the series. Corey Stoll and Vera Farmiga in the film.Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.Livia Soprano (Nancy Marchand, Vera Farmiga)Tony’s mother, played in the series by Nancy Marchand, is one of the colossal psychic stressors that drive Tony into therapy, and in “Many Saints,” we see the long-suffering woman back when she still had the faintest glimmer of warmth. Vera Farmiga channels the younger version of the character with stunning accuracy.Silvio Dante (Steve Van Zandt, John Magaro)A fixture of the series, Silvio Dante (Steven Van Zandt) is one of Tony’s top lieutenants and most trusted advisers. “Many Saints” finds him played by John Magaro and working with similar diligence under Dickie, as well as taking a personal liking to the young Tony, who he observes has a great deal of potential. We get some long-awaited answers about the character’s natural hairline.Paulie Gualtieri (Tony Sirico, Billy Magnussen)Paulie Gualtieri, sometimes known as Paulie Walnuts, is a “Sopranos” fan favorite, beloved for his stylized Italian mannerisms and no-bull attitude. Like Silvio, Paulie is a faithful lieutenant of Tony’s on the series (where he’s played by Tony Sirico) and works closely with Dickie in “Many Saints” (when Billy Magnussen takes the role).Ray Liotta, left, Joey “CoCo” Diaz, Corey Stoll, Samson Moeakiola and Billy Magnussen in “Many Saints.”Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero (Vincent Pastore, Samson Moeakiola)The colorfully nicknamed “Big Pussy” is another lieutenant in the New Jersey mafia who works for Dickie (Samson Moeakiola in the film) and later Tony (Vincent Pastore in the series). Although he has a small role in “Many Saints,” he goes on to be an important figure in Tony’s life, with his betrayal of the family forming the heart of the show’s second season.Janice Soprano (Aida Turturro, Mattea Conforti)Sister to Tony, and daughter to Johnny Boy and Livia, she’s resented by Tony as the family’s golden child, much spoiled and doted on. In the film, she’s played by Mattea Conforti, who grows up to be Aida Turturro in the series. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Makes an Intriguing Offer to Logan Paul

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      The YouTube personality called Kimmel out for referring to him as one of the worst people in the world — alongside Donald Trump.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.‘I’ll Introduce You to Nicki Minaj’s Cousin’s Friend’The YouTube personality Logan Paul called out Jimmy Kimmel this week for referring to him and Donald Trump as “the very worst people in the world” during a recent broadcast. Kimmel apologized on Thursday night to Paul, who affectionately referred to him as “J.K.” during his complaint and said he’d opened up to Kimmel about missing a testicle.“Oh, come on now. Had I known you fondly called me ‘J.K.’ I never would have said any of that stuff,” Kimmel said.“I’m sorry, L.P. I hope we can be bros again, dude. I really do, and I’m sorry about your testicle. I forgot about that. You know what? To make up for it, I’m gonna give you one of my testicles. Or, wait a minute — I just thought of something. Maybe I’ll introduce you to Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend. This guy, he’s got more testicle than he knows what to do with.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (SpaceX Edition)“Last night, SpaceX made history when it launched the first all-tourist crew into orbit. Sadly, one of them forgot to tell Verizon he’s traveling, so now he’s up there like, ‘Damn it, I’ve been roaming this whole time.’” — JIMMY FALLON“This is the first orbital mission in the history of spaceflight staffed entirely by nonprofessionals. No one on board is an astronaut; none of them have any training. One of them is a geologist. So if there’s an emergency, they’ll at least know what kind of rock they’re gonna crash into.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“These are the four winners of the golden ticket. They include a billionaire, a cancer survivor, a geologist and a raffle winner. All they’re missing is the professor and Mary Ann.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“[Imitating SpaceX passenger] Houston, we have a problem, but I have no idea what the problem is, since I own a chain of laundromats. I have already cleaned the lint trap. I’m gonna try putting in more quarters.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Imagine that — going on a rocket, no one on board is qualified to fly? It’s like if Spirit Airlines went to space.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“By the way, if you’re not real astronauts, I feel like you shouldn’t get to pose like the crew from Apollo 13.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But you have to love humans — we just launched four civilians into orbit on a recreational spaceflight. We’re still more interested in uncovering the mystery of Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend’s balls.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingLeVar Burton talked with Trevor Noah about two of his favorite things: reading and “Jeopardy.”Also, Check This OutA scene from “My Name Is Pauli Murray.” The documentarian Betsy West, who made the film with Julie Cohen, said, “We just thought, why didn’t anybody teach us about this person?”  Amazon StudiosA new documentary highlights the unsung influence of the activist, lawyer and minister Pauli Murray. More

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      Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings to Host ‘Jeopardy!’ Through End of Year

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      The sitcom star and the former contestant will split hosting duties while the show continues its quest to find a permanent replacement for Alex Trebek.The game show “Jeopardy!” announced on Thursday that its host, Mayim Bialik, would split hosting duties with Ken Jennings, a former contestant, through the end of the year.It was the latest twist in the game show’s drawn-out struggle to find a replacement for Alex Trebek, the popular longtime host whose death in November started a fraught succession battle. “Jeopardy!” began by cycling through a series of guest hosts. Then it announced that the job would go to Mike Richards, who had been its executive producer. After a reporter unearthed a series of offensive and sexist comments that he had made on a podcast, he stepped down as host, and shortly after that left the program entirely.Bialik, who had initially been tapped alongside Richards to host a series of prime-time “Jeopardy!” specials, was enlisted to begin hosting weeknight programs as well. On Thursday, the program announced that she would share hosting duties with Jennings through the end of 2021.“Everyone on the staff is supralunar,” the @Jeopardy account tweeted on Thursday.Bialik will host episodes starting Monday, which will air through Nov. 5. After that, she and Jennings will split hosting duties as their schedules allow, according to Sony, which produces the show.Jennings, who holds the record for the show’s longest winning streak as a contestant, had been considered a strong contender to take over as the show’s permanent host during the guest host tryouts, but past insensitive tweets of his came to light, which he then apologized for.“Jeopardy!” had tried to settle its future over the summer when it named Richards, 46, as host, despite lack of name recognition among viewers and the fact that, as the show’s executive producer, he had overseen elements of the succession planning.But after a report in The Ringer revealed degrading comments he had made on a podcast several years ago — including a 2013 episode where Richards called his female co-host a “booth slut” because she once worked as a model at a consumer show in Las Vegas, and referred to stereotypes about Jews — he stepped down as host. Old lawsuits also resurfaced from Richards’s previous job running “The Price Is Right” that included accusations of sexist behavior.Sony initially said he would remain as executive producer of “Jeopardy!” but soon afterward announced he would leave the show entirely.Before his resignation, Richards taped a week’s worth of “Jeopardy!” episodes in a single day of filming, which are currently airing. Bialik’s episodes will follow.A spokeswoman for Sony said the network had no update on its timetable for naming a new host, or whether it would be by the end of the year. More

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      The Dead Get a Do-Over

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      In a flurry of streaming television shows, the departed get a second chance. And viewers find an outlet for sorrow and remorse.In “Manifest,” a series streaming on Netflix, Michaela, one of the show’s more candidly troubled characters, turns up with her companions after a lengthy, unexplained absence to be reunited with their families.She ought to be ecstatic. But her reactions more aptly reflect the Kübler-Ross model of grief, some of its stages — denial, depression and anger — mingling on her features, along with a slow-dawning acceptance. As she tells Jared, her former fiancé, “Part of me wishes we hadn’t come back at all.”Her response seems relatable. Mourning her life as she knew it, Michaela is one of some 200 passengers on the Montego Air Flight 828, who have mysteriously vanished only to return five years later, not a day older and sound of body but freighted with all manner of weighty emotional baggage.In “Glitch,” Maria (Daniela Farinacci) resurfaces still caked in the soil from her grave.NetflixThat tale is but one in a rash of streaming series finding new audiences in the midst of a lingering pandemic, luring viewers with the suggestion that the boundary between life and death may be porous indeed. The departed get a new purchase on life in “Glitch,” an Australian offering in which the long-expired denizens of Yoorana, a fictional community in the Australian outback, stagger back to their homes, bodies still caked with the soil from their graves.“The 4400,” focused on the undead but with none of the zombie horror effects, shows the newly risen wielding oddly assorted superpowers. In “The OA,” a fable-like iteration of the resurrection theme, the heroine has perished many times over, blind in one incarnation but gifted in another with an extraordinary second sight. Death itself is illusory, she assures a young school friend. “I think you are always somewhere.”There is “The Returned,” an American adaptation of “Les Revenants,” a decade-old series about the long-gone members of a French Alpine village intent on picking up the shards of their lives, unaware that their near and dear have long since moved on. And “Katla,” an Icelandic production in which the deceased resurface in the shadow of an active volcano, seeking to salve emotional wounds.At a time when people are grieving not only their dead, but lost jobs, opportunities and daily routines, the appetite for such fare seems especially poignant. Reveries, sci-fi fantasies or meditations on life’s great mysteries, these shows offer viewers little in the way of resolution but hold out a promise of redemption, reunion and, not least, a chance to muse on their mortality.“Death has been a more omnipresent force in our lives in the last 18 months than it has been in our lifetimes,” said Steve Leder, the senior rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles and the author, most recently, of “The Beauty of What Remains,” about the nature of bereavement.“Death is no longer something we can banish to the basement of our psyches,” Rabbi Leder said. “It is that broomstick pounding on that basement ceiling, demanding: ‘What about me? Pay attention. I must be reckoned with.’”Dr. Andre (T.L. Thompson) and Claudette (Jaye Ladymore) of “The 4400” beam down with a mission.Adrian S. Burrows Sr./THE CW, via Associated PressSuch shows offer, as well, a chance for viewers to confront, or at least contemplate, their most nagging anxieties. “These shows are our version of a roller coaster, a death-defying ride with the things you fear most.” said David Kessler, whose most recent book, “Finding Meaning, The Sixth Stage of Grief,” explores the reverberations of loss.“When people are grieving, one of their greatest fears is that they’re going to forget about the person they have lost,” Mr. Kessler said. “We don’t want to move on because that feels like abandoning those we love.”There is scant chance of that in the latest shows, many of them defunct network series revived for streaming at an eerily opportune time. “We live in the world’s first death-free generation, meaning that many people live into their 40s before experiencing the death of a parent, sometimes even a grandparent,” said Alan Wolfelt, a death educator and grief counselor.“In a mourning-avoidant culture such as ours watching these shows is, in part, a rehearsal,” he said. “They permit audiences to mourn and to acknowledge the reality of their own death.”Yet they raise more questions than they can or care to answer. What makes us special? Do we, as in the case of “Manifest,” return with a mission or calling? Are there others like us? Are we in danger, or are we among the chosen? Will we get the chance of a do-over?Matters of faith are underscored in “Manifest,” as when a startled passer-by drops to her knees at the sight of Cal, the youngest and most insightful of the Flight 828 returnees, chanting, “He is risen.” For people eager to regain some semblance of certainty in a disordered time, these stories exert a powerful pull.“We’re a very mastery-oriented culture, always wanting answers,” said Pauline Boss, an emeritus professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota and the author of “Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change.”“With the spread of the virus, those answers are not necessarily forthcoming,” Dr. Boss said. “We don’t know if we can trust the person at the grocery store, whether or not they have been vaccinated. People are dying apart from their families, and those families may be feeling no sense of closure.“What we have now is this whole host of ambiguous losses: loss of life, loss of jobs and loss of faith that the world is a safe place.”“Manifest” will return for a fourth and final season, though Netflix has not announced a date. Peter Friedlander, who heads Netflix scripted series in the United States and Canada, said the series resonates with viewers because of their insatiable craving for mystery.“It scratches that itch, trying in some way to hypothesize about the great unknown, to explore the notion of revisiting unfinished business,” Mr. Friedlander said. Such fare is a balm as well for people dealing with regret, he suggested, those eager to extract a message of hope from apparently meaningless, ungovernable events.Sean Cohen, 27, a digital artist in Chicago who posts “Manifest”-inspired illustrations on Instagram, finds solace in the series. “It creates this whole story of how everything that happens is connected,” he said in a direct message on Instagram. There is also the emotional uplift, he said, “of seeing the passengers come together to help one another as the mystery unfolds.”The show also captivates Princess Louden, 25, a dancer and graduate student in social work in Los Angeles. “‘Manifest’ technically is about something that could never happen,” Ms. Louden said. “It’s not like aliens are invading the planet. But it leaves a little room for all kinds of possibility. That’s what draws me in.”The show is pure escapism, said Audra Jones Dosunmu, 52, a talent manager in the fashion and entertainment industries. “But there is also the idea that ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’”“In a way I think of these shows as crisis pornography,’” Ms. Dosunmu added. “People like to see others going through things that they could never manage. But if that makes them feel thankful and better about their own lives, it’s a good thing.”Many of the shows offer the tantalizing possibility of rescue and redemption, reassuring fans that, as is repeated like a mantra on “Manifest,” “all things work together for good. …”In “Katla,” the dead, rise naked and covered in ash, a volcano erupts.  NetflixOn “Manifest,” the risen heed inner voices urging them to acts of heroism. Michaela responds to a “calling” to free two teenagers trapped in a killer’s lair. In “Glitch,” a young woman sets out to confront her rapist and murderer. In “Katla,” estranged sisters, one of them dead, work at mending their frayed relationship; and in “The Returned,” a serial killer in a former life learns to rue and curb his lethal impulses.These shows explore the prospect of a second chance, of tackling unfinished business, revisiting relationships, and dealing with regret, Mr. Friedlander said. “They let you look at the choices you’ve made and reflect on your priorities and values.“It’s that sliding-door scenario that asks, ‘What if I could say one more thing to that person I’ve lost?’” More

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      Late Night Takes Lots of Jabs at Nicki Minaj

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      The rapper’s tweets about her cousin’s friend, who she said had swollen testicles after taking the Covid vaccine, set off a flood of commentary.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.A Swell GuyOn Tuesday’s late-night shows, Nicki Minaj’s tweets about her cousin’s friend in Trinidad who she said got swollen testicles after receiving the Covid vaccine were a hot topic.On Wednesday, the rapper responded to the hosts who had poked fun, including Jimmy Kimmel, who asked to be connected with the afflicted man, saying he had questions.“And I guess Nicki saw it, because she reached out on Twitter,” Kimmel said. “She wrote: ‘He’s willing to talk for the right price. I’m his manager. Call me, Jimmy.’ Which was exciting. Don’t have Nicki’s number, and I do want to get an idea of what kind of money we’re talking about, so I wrote back, ‘Does he charge by the pound?’”Tuesday’s “Late Show” parodied Minaj’s hit “Super Bass,” which Minaj found amusing, writing that she wasn’t upset because she “rlly” likes Stephen Colbert.“Nicki, for the record, I ‘rlly’ like you, too,” Colbert said on Wednesday. “That’s why I want you to get vaccinated so you can come on the show again, because without a shot, the network ‘rlly’ won’t let you come on.”The Punchiest Punchlines (Crisis Averted Edition)“California Gov. Gavin Newsom yesterday defeated a recall attempt by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, and Newsom was so relieved, his hair unclenched.” — SETH MEYERS“Sorry, California Republicans, I know you spent 20 months and millions of dollars on this recall, but you know what they say.: You win some, but not in California.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Did he win? Can you win an election you didn’t want to happen?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The cost to our state was about $300 million, which I think is the third-most-expensive dinner at French Laundry ever.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The race was called for Newsom less than an hour after the polls closed. Less than an hour. Amazing how fast an election can end when Rudy Giuliani isn’t involved, isn’t it?”— JIMMY FALLON“The election was called so early, Newsom was able to get his beauty sleep, which, by the looks of him, is like 17 hours a day.” — JAMES CORDEN“In fact, there were three options on the ballot that said ‘yes,’ ‘no’ and ‘This is a bigger waste of time than driving into L.A.X.’” — SETH MEYERS“A vast majority of Californians voted no on the recall. So many people marked no, it was like the R.S.V.P.s for a destination wedding.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingOn “Full Frontal,” Samantha Bee skewered conservatives for perpetuating vaccine misinformation and mixed messaging.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightSeth Meyers will host the cast of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” for the last time on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutSamantha Bee and other late-night hosts will focus their Sept. 22 episodes on climate change. “We need to not be submerged underwater in order to have successful late-night shows,” she said.TBSLate-night hosts will address climate change on their respective shows as part of Climate Night on Sept. 22. More

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      Here’s Why Norm Macdonald Was Comedy Royalty. It’s Not ‘S.N.L.’

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      He may have been best known for his work on “Saturday Night Live,” but he should be really remembered for decades of club sets and you-can’t-miss-this clips.My favorite Norm Macdonald joke — and trust me, there’s serious competition — is one he told as anchor of Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live” in the late 1990s. Papers in front of him, he reported with a cheer: “Yippie! Jerry Rubin died this week.” Looking down, he apologized for his mistake and tried again: “That should read: ‘Yippie Jerry Rubin died this week.’”Silly, dark, ruthlessly concise, this gem is a model of craft, and like many of Macdonald’s bits, it proves how the smallest change in tone, language or, in this case, exclamation mark can radically shift meaning, providing the kind of jolt of surprise that produces belly laughs.Macdonald, who died Tuesday of cancer, maintained a studied modesty about his work. He said that his act had no substance, that it was all “gossip and trickery.” And he claimed without self-pity that he would be remembered only for his few years at “Saturday Night Live,” not his decades of stand-up, which he referred to as “a shabby business, made up of shabby fellows like me who cross the country, stay at shabby hotels, and tell jokes they no longer find funny.”He described his life as a sprint to outrun the wolves of irrelevancy. “They caught and devoured me years ago,” he wrote in his 2016 quasi-memoir, “Based on a True Story.”Whether he believed this about himself doesn’t matter (Macdonald was a very skillful liar) and there is some merit to his points about stand-up and his credits, but the ornate way he beats himself up hints at a deeper truth: Macdonald was not only one of the funniest comics of his generation, but also a sneaky aesthete who elevated stand-up, helping shift its cultural prestige over the past few decades into an art deserving respect.His legacy is not clear from his level of stardom or even his list of television shows and specials, although he has some signal accomplishments, including an early stint as a writer on “Roseanne” and one of the best Netflix specials of the past decade, “Hitler’s Dog, Gossip & Trickery.” Macdonald’s greatness is not on his IMDb page so much as in the number of you-have-to-see-this moments, the kind that friends tell you about at parties and then send you the clip the next day.Many of these came from talk shows, where he was a hall-of-fame guest. He told one of the most justly revered jokes in late-night history on Conan O’Brien’s “Tonight” show, a preposterous masterpiece of literary suspense-building about a moth in a podiatrist’s office. Another moment on the couch from the same show went viral decades later: He interrupted an interview with the actress Courtney Thorne-Smith to savagely insult Carrot Top, the star of the movie she was promoting, a brutally hilarious act of sabotage.Macdonald had other talents. When it comes to parodies of roasts, he stood alone, turning intentionally awful jokes at the roast of Bob Saget into disorienting performance art that remains one of the funniest bits of anti-comedy you will ever see. And on “Saturday Night Live,” he may have been at his best on the Weekend Update desk (ultimately getting fired after his jokes about O.J. Simpson), but he also delivered several singular impressions, including a version of David Letterman that was both accurate and far too bizarre to be realistic.Letterman proved to be a key figure in Macdonald’s career, a champion of the stand-up’s work (the talk-show host said no one was funnier) who booked the comic on his show’s final week. Macdonald, breaking from his trademark acerbic style, ended on a surprisingly moving tribute, displaying an emotional side that usually only lurked under the surface of his comedy.In a column from 2017, I argued that what distinguished Macdonald’s comedy was his sensitivity to language, his peculiarly poetic brand of plain talk. He made stylish turns of phrase and folksy flourishes seem conversational and offhand. A lover of Bob Dylan, Macdonald was also a sponge for influences, borrowing and repurposing figures of speech or unusual words to create funny-sounding sentences.But describing him as merely a master of joke writing misses his quickness, wryly deadpan delivery and, most of all, a unique level of commitment. He did not bail out of jokes and never pandered. You see this in his Bob Saget roast: the conviction to push through despite the confusion of the response. He pleased the crowd without being a crowd-pleaser. And no one had a nimbler and more assured sarcastic voice, which he used to find humor in ambiguity. There was a wonderfully odd moment on David Spade’s talk show a few years ago when Macdonald told Jay Leno he was maybe the best talk-show host ever, and no one, including Leno, seemed to be able to tell if he was being sincere.There’s a lot of fun to be had in this liminal space between earnestness and just kidding. One of Macdonald’s most impressive feats is writing an entire memoir that remains there. It’s one of the greatest comedian memoirs but also a pointedly frustrating mix of fact and fiction, cliché and originality. It’s very funny, sometimes tedious, occasionally wise. The title, “Based on a True Story,” isn’t just a gag. It’s rooted in his faith that, as he puts it, “there is no way of telling a true story. I mean a really true one, because of memory. It’s just no good.”Just because you can’t tell a really true one doesn’t mean that art can’t get closer to the truth. In an interview with New York magazine, Macdonald balked at the trend toward confessional art, saying he thought art was supposed to be about concealment. That was revealing.The fact that he struggled with cancer for a decade was something he certainly didn’t advertise in his work. His death came as a shock to many. But clues were everywhere. Death has been among his favorite subjects in recent years. In a great viral moment, he delivered one of the earliest and best comedy club sets about the coronavirus. It was at the Improv in Los Angeles in March 2020 right before venues were shutting down. “It’s funny that we all now know how we’re going to die,” he said. “It’s just a matter of what order.”At the start of his memoir, he tells a story about reading on his Wikipedia page that he had died. Then he imagines if it were true, laughing until a thought stops him cold. “The preposterous lie on the screen before me isn’t that far off,” he wrote. This seemed like jokey melodrama when I first read it, but now it hits differently.Macdonald once talked about an uncle dying of cancer, skewering how we now describe people suffering from that disease as “waging a battle” because that means the last thing you do before you die is lose. “I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure that if you die, then the cancer also dies at the same time,” Macdonald said on Comedy Central. “That to me is not a loss. That’s a draw.” More

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      Late-Night Shows Are Teaming Up to Tackle Climate Change

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      Climate change may not be the easiest subject to laugh about, but a group of late-night hosts are teaming up in hopes of raising awareness about the issue and even finding some humor in it.On Sept. 22, seven of the network and cable late-night shows will take part in Climate Night, during which each of these programs will have a focus on climate change and produce their own original content on the topic.The shows that plan to participate in Climate Night are “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night With Seth Meyers” on NBC; “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “The Late Late Show With James Corden” on CBS; “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” on TBS; “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on ABC; and “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” on Comedy Central.Samantha Bee said in an interview that she could not recall another occasion during her tenure as a late-night host when so many of programs coordinated their efforts like this.“And really, what’s a more compelling cause to combine forces on than the climate, which we require in order to do our shows?” she said. “We need to not be submerged underwater in order to have successful late-night shows. The need is great.”The initiative is organized by Steve Bodow, a veteran late-night writer and producer and a former showrunner at “The Daily Show” and Netflix’s “Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj.”Bodow said in a phone interview that the event was organized to coincide with Climate Week NYC, which begins on Monday, and to call attention to the subject by having these shows focus on it simultaneously.“Climate change, obviously, is something we’re all dealing with,” he said. “We’re all talking about it. We all need to be talking about it. What if these shows all talked about it at once? It makes a statement that they’re all willing to do this.”Bodow said that his outreach to the showrunners and producers at these late-night programs was met with a spirit of cooperation, for the most part.As he explained: “Everyone, before committing, wanted to be assured that, really, we’re all jumping into the pool at the same time? If I jump, you’re not going to be standing at the edge of the pool, laughing at me and I’m all wet?”Each program, he said, will address climate change in its own segments and its own voice. “Some of the shows will really dive in all the way,” Bodow said. “They may have other ideas they want to do that night. But they’ll be doing some meaningful part of their show, at a minimum, and others will do even more.”Bodow said his request to each program was: “Please do your show the way that you do your show. The shows have different styles and vibes, and that’s how they’ll approach this. There’s plenty to talk about.”Bee said that, despite the inherently comedic tone of these late-night shows, they could still offer a constructive platform to address such an ominous topic.“It’s a really overwhelming conversation to have because so much has to happen, so urgently,” she said. “I do think that we, individually, each do a great job of breaking down stories in ways that are palatable. Comedy is a great delivery system for actual information.”She added: “And I expect, probably by the end of the show, we will have solved the climate crisis. So that’s exciting.” More

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      Late Night Remembers Norm Macdonald

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      Seth Meyers, James Corden and Jimmy Fallon paid tribute to the stand-up comic and former “Saturday Night Live” cast member on Tuesday.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.A Late-Night LegendThe comedian Norm Macdonald died on Tuesday, and a few late-night hosts caught the news in time to honor the frequent guest and former “Saturday Night Live” cast member.Seth Meyers called the loss of Macdonald tragic, saying, “I do not think that Norm would want to hear anything sentimental.” Still, Meyers shared some of his favorite Macdonald quips and what he had learned from watching him anchor “Weekend Update.”“And also, he loved, or I should say he just didn’t care, if he was bombing. If he thought the jokes were good, he had exactly as much fun telling them to a dead audience than to one who appreciated them. And I think for so many of us, we came up watching Norm, and we thought that you were on the inside with him when you were watching him tell these jokes that you thought were great, and no one in the room thought was good and you just felt this connection to him — and that ability to just stare into an audience, unblinkingly telling the jokes that — that you believed in.” — SETH MEYERSJimmy Fallon called Macdonald one of his comedy idols — “a comic’s comic” — reciting a bit from Macdonald’s early stand-up sets he’d memorized.“He’s just one of the greatest comedians ever, and, God, we’re going to miss him. He was a friend of the show — family, really, to us.” — JIMMY FALLONJames Corden hailed Macdonald as “perhaps the single greatest guest in the history of late-night television.”“Norm Macdonald passed away today, far too soon, after a nine-year battle with cancer; a battle Norm never told anybody about, because all Norm ever wanted to do was to make us laugh, and he was absolutely brilliant at it. There was nobody quite like him.” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Side Effects Edition)“After she announced that she has not received the coronavirus vaccine, rapper Nicki Minaj tweeted yesterday that a friend of her cousin received the shot and became impotent after, quote, ‘his testicles became swollen.’ Which is pretty shocking, because when I got the shot, it was in my arm.” — SETH MEYERS“I can’t believe I have to say this, but doctors agree that Covid vaccines do not cause swollen testicles. But to be fair to Dr. Minaj, everyone knows there’s no source more reliable than your extended family’s acquaintances in another country.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Her report comes straight from ‘The New England Journal of my cousin’s friend in Trinidad.’ Just check out this week’s study, ‘I heard his girlfriend got pregnant from a hot tub.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Can we talk a moment about this poor guy. Think about it: He’s minding his own business with his swollen testicles in Trinidad and because his best friend happens to be cousins with Nicki Minaj — now the whole world knows that he’s impotent, he got dumped and he’s got giant testicles. He must be so mad at his friend.” — TREVOR NOAH“I mean that poor guy — single, swollen and everyone is asking them if he can hook them up with Nicki Minaj tickets.” — TREVOR NOAH“And for this friend, hate to say it, if your testicles swell up, the question isn’t ‘Did you get a vaccine recently?’ it’s ‘What have you been doing to your balls?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“By the way, if anyone can track down this friend of Nicki’s cousin, I would really like to talk to him — I have questions.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingThe Broadway cast of “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” performed “Private Dancer” on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightNew “Dancing With the Stars” cast member Jojo Siwa will be on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutFrom left, Alexia Landeau, Elisabeth Shue, Sarah Jones and Julie Delpy in a scene from “On the Verge.”NetflixThe French actress Julie Delpy created and stars in the new Netflix series “On the Verge,” a comedy following four middle-age friends in Los Angeles. More