Television

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      Seth Meyers: Chauvin Verdict Confirms ‘What We Saw With Our Own Eyes’

      by

      “As we’ve explained on this show many times before, the culture and system of policing in this country must be dismantled and reformed,” Meyers said on Wednesday.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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Holding Out for Justice for AllOn Wednesday, as Derek Chauvin’s conviction in the killing of George Floyd continued to reverberate around the country, Seth Meyers said it was “at the very least a relief to have what we saw with our own eyes confirmed by a court of law, even if it’s still a sorrow moment for grief and mourning, because this one verdict alone does not mean justice is done.”“True justice would mean George Floyd would still be alive today. True justice would mean Black people no longer having to live in fear of being killed by police. But there was at least accountability, which is hopefully a comfort to George Floyd’s family, and all those mourning his death, and a first step toward true justice and the reform we so desperately need, because it is undeniably the case that this is not the end of the story. As we’ve explained on this show many times before, the culture and system of policing in this country must be dismantled and reformed.” — SETH MEYERSSamantha Bee and Stephen Colbert also described Chauvin’s conviction on all charges as just a step in the right direction on a long path to righting generations of injustice.“While yesterday’s guilty verdicts are a step toward justice, they don’t change the fact that a man was murdered and Black people are still being killed by police. We have a long way to go to make this a country that, I don’t know, actually treats everybody like human [expletive] beings?” — SAMANTHA BEE“Americans are still emotionally processing yesterday’s verdict by a Minnesota jury that found Derek Chauvin guilty on three counts in the murder of George Floyd. It brings up a lot of complex feelings, because no jury verdict can bring George Floyd back, but the news of this accountability was celebrated across the nation, in Minnesota, New York and across the street from the White House, in Black Lives Matter Plaza, where people were dancing and crying with relief. What a difference 11 months make: Last time they were crying from tear gas and rubber bullets.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, the problem of police violence against people of color is still far from solved. While this is a welcome verdict, it’s like wiping up a spill on the Titanic: Good job, now let’s focus on the water pooling around our ankles.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yeah, it should not take nine minutes of damning video to get some accountability. There’s a reason the Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t say, ‘With liberty and justice for all who are being filmed on an iPhone. Otherwise, sucks to be you!’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Misleaders Edition)“We can see the injustice with our own eyes, but there’s a whole industry of people, from police unions, to private prisons, to cable pundits, whose very lucrative job is to try to convince us that what we can see and hear with our own eyes and ears is not real. In fact, it’s worth going back and reading the initial police description of Floyd’s murder before the video came out to see just how deeply detached from reality it was. Here’s the official headline: ‘Man dies after medical incident during police interaction.’ It’s shocking. It’s hard to fathom. It’s like writing a book report about ‘Lord of the Flies’ called, ‘Kids successfully cooperate during tropical vacation, remain lifelong friends.’” — SETH MEYERS“Many Americans on Twitter, on various platforms, have spoken passionately, powerfully, about the verdicts and their significance yesterday, but none spoke less eloquently than Tucker Carlson of Fox News.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“After former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty yesterday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed the jury was intimidated into the guilty verdict by the protests and the Black Lives Matter movement, which is frustrating for Carlson, because he put a lot of work into intimidating that jury.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingSamantha Bee made the case for federal legalization of marijuana on Wednesday’s “Full Frontal.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe Olympic champion gymnast Simone Biles will join Jimmy Fallon on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutIn “Minari,” Steven Yeun, front, portrays a Korean immigrant who moves with his family to rural Arkansas in the 1980s; Lee Isaac Chung directed.David Bornfriend/A24With more female directors and people of color nominated for Oscars, the coronavirus pandemic seemed to have a positive effect on the diversity of this year’s Academy Awards. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      LeVar Burton Will Guest Host ‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Are Over the Rainbow.

      by

      After a fervent online campaign to get the “Reading Rainbow” star a slot, it’s finally happening.This is “Jeopardy!” — with your host, LeVar Burton.After a social media campaign to get Burton, a star of “Reading Rainbow” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” into a guest-host slot on “Jeopardy!,” the show announced Wednesday that he would indeed step up in the last week of July.“Our goal has been to present a wide variety of guest hosts with different skill sets and backgrounds on our path to finding a permanent host,” the show’s executive producer, Mike Richards, said in a statement. “Our passionate fans are telling us what they like, and we are listening.”Fans were predictably thrilled.“Butterfly in the sky, I’m twice as high about the @levarburton news!” one Twitter post read.But there may have been one person even more excited than Burton’s fans: the actor himself.“THANK YOU… to all y’all for your passionate support!” he tweeted.Since the death of the show’s beloved former host Alex Trebek after a battle with pancreatic cancer last November, “Jeopardy!” has been cycling through a roster of guest hosts that has included celebrities like Katie Couric, Dr. Oz and Aaron Rodgers, and former champions like Ken Jennings.In addition to Burton, the final group will also include the “Good Morning America” anchors George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts; the former “Celebrity Jeopardy!” champion David Faber; and the sportscaster Joe Buck, the show announced Wednesday. Each will host a week of episodes this summer, and the show will make a donation in the amount of the cumulative winnings during that host’s week to a charity of their choice.“Jeopardy!” has not yet named a permanent replacement for Trebek, and Anderson Cooper is currently filling the role through the end of April. But Burton is many fans’ choice, and a Change.org petition backing him for the permanent job has more than 246,000 signatures.Burton hosted 21 seasons of the educational PBS series “Reading Rainbow,” from 1983 through 2006, in addition to serving as the program’s executive producer. He also starred as Lt. Cmdr. Geordi LaForge on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and currently hosts the podcast “LeVar Burton Reads.”For some, Wednesday’s announcement was just the tip of the iceberg of what they hope will soon be even more good news.“We did it everybody!” one fan tweeted. “Now keep doing it until we’re all hearing ‘Welcome to Jeopardy! with your host LeVar Burton’ for the next few decades.” More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      How Late Night Addressed the Derek Chauvin Verdict

      by

      “It’s hard to celebrate, because a man is still dead, but there is a sense of relief that at least this one injustice was not compounded with indifference,” said a somber Stephen Colbert.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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘A Step in the Right Direction’On Tuesday night, several late-night hosts addressed the breaking news that Derek Chauvin, a former police officer in Minneapolis, had been convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd. The case prompted mass racial justice protests last year after Chauvin, who is white, was filmed kneeling on the neck of Floyd, who was Black, for more than nine minutes as Floyd pleaded for his life.“After 10 hours of deliberation, a jury in Minneapolis decided that it’s illegal for the police to murder people; that Black lives matter,” said Stephen Colbert.“It’s hard to celebrate, because a man is still dead, but there is a sense of relief that at least this one injustice was not compounded with indifference. And it could easily have gone the other way. No matter what you saw on that tape, this nation does not have a great track record on this subject. But at least in this case, this man faces accountability.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But justice is a far more difficult goal. America still has a problem of over-policing and systemic racism, but hopefully this is a step toward a future where police being held accountable for their actions isn’t headline material, and a hope that accountability today is a deterrent for tomorrow.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Today is one stop on a journey that began last May and led to protests calling for that accountability in every town and every city in America. But this is just one stop. There is more work to be done, and it’s work that all of us should be committed to, because as Ben Crump, the Floyd family lawyer, reminded us today, justice for Black America is justice for all America.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And while this is a step in the right direction, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Too often, justice isn’t served, and the need for police reform remains. We all must continue to call out injustice until things change for the better.” — JIMMY FALLON“Real justice would be Black Americans not having to live in fear of being stopped by police and killed, and surely that is a verdict that we need to work towards. And that can be the verdict that one day we can celebrate.” — JAMES CORDEN“I think we’re all grateful that it went the way that it did. In this case, the jury made the correct decision, a unanimous decision, which is a step in the right direction. And I hope the verdict itself brings comfort to the family of George Floyd and all those who mourn his death. And I also want to say, ‘Good luck in prison, Derek, you’ll need it.’ That’s right. I hope you’re there for a very long time.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (National Holiday Edition)“4/20, of course, is a holiday for pot smokers and pot eaters who celebrate 4/20 by doing pretty much exactly what they do every day.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I read that 40 percent of people who smoke think 4/20 should be a national holiday, while the rest skipped work today because they thought it was a national holiday.” — JIMMY FALLON“Right now there is so much smoke in New York City, every apartment looks like it elected a new pope.” — JIMMY FALLON“And this April 20 is the big one, because today, 4/20 turned 50. Fifty! That means it’s old enough to sneak off into the garage while the kids are at soccer practice and smoke half a joint, but then it has a panic attack, so it spends the afternoon on the couch drinking water and watching QVC. Far out, man.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This is the 50th anniversary because, back in 1971, a group of California high school students used to gather to smoke pot every day at 4:20 p.m. Admirable punctuality for a group of kids who were always high.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Not really as edgy, is it, as it used to be? Do you know what I mean? Now that marijuana is legal in California, you know? Sort of feels like the equivalent of White Wine Day.” — JAMES CORDEN“I hope we don’t get caught up in the commercialism of 4/20 and forget the real meaning of 4/20, you know?” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingMike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and fiercely loyal Trump supporter, responded to Jimmy Kimmel’s Monday-night monologue, in which the host jokingly invited him on his show.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightRicky Martin will perform on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutChris Buck for The New York TimesSeth Rogen, above, has made a pivot from Hollywood stoner to homemade ceramist. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Felix Silla, Cousin Itt on ‘The Addams Family’ Dies at 84

      by

      He made a strong impression in his best-known role, even though his face wasn’t seen and his voice wasn’t heard.Felix Silla, the actor best known for playing the hairy Cousin Itt on the sitcom “The Addams Family,” died on Friday. He was 84.The cause was cancer, Mr. Silla’s representative, Bonnie Vent, said in a statement. She did not say where he died.Mr. Silla, who stood less than four feet tall, appeared as Cousin Itt in 17 episodes of “The Addams Family,” although his face was not seen and his voice was not heard. Sporting a floor-length hairpiece, sunglasses and a bowler hat, Cousin Itt spoke in a high-pitched mumble (his voice was provided by someone else in postproduction), which was understood only by the other members of the family.“The Addams Family,” seen on ABC from 1964 to 1966, was based on Charles Addams’s New Yorker cartoons about a family that was (in the words of its theme song) “mysterious and spooky.” Cousin Itt, who became a fan favorite, was created specifically for the show.Mr. Silla in 1965 as the hairy Cousin Itt in “The Addams Family.” With him, from left, were John Astin (as Gomez Addams), Carolyn Jones (Morticia Addams) and Ted Cassidy (the butler Lurch).Walt Disney Television, via Getty ImagesMr. Silla’s face also went unseen in other roles, including the robot Twiki on the 1979-81 NBC science fiction series “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.” He was unheard there as well; Twiki’s voice was provided for most of the show’s run by Mel Blanc.He played an Ewok who rode a hang glider in the “Star Wars” film “Return of the Jedi” (1983). Four years later he was in Mel Brooks’s “Star Wars” parody, “Spaceballs.”“Felix knew a lot about making characters come to life with no dialogue,” Ms. Vent said.Viewers had a chance to see Mr. Silla’s face in the 1975 film “The Black Bird,” a comedic sequel to “The Maltese Falcon,” in which he played a villain named Litvak who menaces Sam Spade Jr. (George Segal).Mr. Silla did stunt work in “E.T.” “Poltergeist,” “The Golden Child” and other films. His many TV appearances, in addition to “The Addams Family” and “Buck Rogers,” included roles on “Bewitched,” “Bonanza” and “H.R. Pufnstuf.”His final big-screen role was in “Characterz,” a 2016 film about costumed mascots.Felix Silla was born on Jan. 11, 1937, in Abruzzo, Italy, and came to the United States in 1955. He toured with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus as a bareback rider, trapeze artist and tumbler. He began working in Hollywood as a stuntman in 1962.He is survived by his wife, Sue, and his daughter, Bonnie. His son, Michael, died last year.The New York Times contributed reporting. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      Bradley Whitford Finds Inspiration in the Theater (and Dog Park)

      by

      The star of “The Handmaid’s Tale” talks about the magic sauce of Yo-Yo Ma and Aretha Franklin, and is ready to do some Ken Burns voice-overs.Sometimes an actor’s harshest reviews come from inside his own home. “My son said to me recently, ‘No offense, Dad, but I’ve seen dogs be good in movies,’” Bradley Whitford recalled. “Well, it’s devastating because it’s true.”But maybe his son isn’t familiar with the full extent of his father’s process.Yes, Whitford has previously compared Commander Lawrence, his Emmy-winning misogynistic architect of Gilead in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” to Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense who helped escalate the Vietnam War and then struggled with its moral consequences.But examine Lawrence more closely and you might recognize the unreadable gaze of a Siberian husky, the soulful danger of a mastiff, the Australian shepherd’s keen intelligence.Because sometimes Whitford trawls for creative inspiration at the dog park, where he spends lots of time with his well-loved rescues: Izzy, a Chihuahua-Jack Russell mix, and Otis, a boxer.So is Lawrence more bite or bark with June (Elisabeth Moss) in Season 4, which begins on Hulu on April 28, as his humanity begins to peek through the cracks in his formidable facade?“I don’t think Lawrence is even aware of it,” he said, “but she is leading him.”Calling from Pasadena, Calif., where he lives with his wife, the actress Amy Landecker, Whitford chatted about his 10 cultural essentials. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “The Story of Ferdinand” by Munro Leaf My earliest, coziest memories are of my mother reading me that book. I was raised Quaker, and we used to joke that “Ferdinand” was kind of a Quaker bible. My mother used to say that when it came out, it was like a commentary on fascism. But for a young Quaker kid, it was extolling these values of nonviolence and nonconformity. Whenever anybody has a kid, I always get them that book.2. WTF With Marc Maron Podcast If I could create an area of study that I think should exist, it would be called “creative studies,” where you study the Beatles, the Renaissance, Steve Jobs, Duke Ellington — people’s creative processes. In the meantime, I listen to Marc Maron because he has those conversations. Whether he’s talking to actors, talking to comedians, it’s just a fascinating way to see how these creative people make stuff. Marc Maron is emotionally pornographic. He’s wide open. And because he’s such an open book, everybody opens up to him. I guess I like fearless people because I’m not. He asked me to do a show and I was terrified.3. Sharon Olds I was driving soon after my daughter was born and I heard someone reading a poem of hers called “Her First Week,” about a baby’s first week. And there’s an image of putting this newborn baby down and how she settles in the crib like a basket of laundry. And it was the most beautiful, true image. I pulled the car over and I was crying, and I started reading all of her stuff. She is so fearlessly intimate and crystalline in her imagery.4. Dog Parks Anybody who knows me knows I’m completely obsessed with dogs. What’s pathetic is when I was shooting in Toronto and couldn’t bring the dogs, I found myself going to the dog park. This very sweet Canadian woman who I saw there every day came over to me and said, “Which one’s yours?” And I said: “Oh, I don’t have one. I just miss my dog. I’m away from home.” And she stepped away from me, like I was a pederast at an elementary school.There are roles I’ve played that are combinations of dogs at a dog park. When I had to play Hubert Humphrey [in HBO’s “All the Way”], I realized he was a cross between a corgi and a boxer. I just find a fascinating display of characters at a dog park. It’s like walking into some four-legged mask class.5. “Aretha’s Gold” My father’s mother was legally blind. She had a record player that came from the Library for the Blind, and I would borrow it. Before every high school performance I would put on “Aretha’s Gold” and lock myself in my room or the basement and turn it all the way up and jump around and sing. And that became a sort of a good-luck warm-up. So when I’m nervous, even to this day, I blast “Aretha’s Gold.”6. ’92 Theater at Wesleyan University When I was at Wesleyan, it was the place where all the student-initiated productions happened, and it’s where I fell in love with acting. It was this joyous venue that had been a church. I just shot “Tick, Tick … Boom!” with Lin-Manuel Miranda, who felt the same. That’s where he started writing “In the Heights.” It’s just this magical place. When I saw “Hamilton” for the first time, I had no idea the kind of emotional response I was going to have, and I remember after the show I was crying. And I said to Lin, “You turn the theater into a church.” There’s something about the ’92 Theater and the freedom in that place — and how audacious you could be before you were trying to do this professionally — that is creatively nourishing.7. Yo-Yo Ma His relationship with the Bach Prelude [of Cello Suite No. 1 in G major] is incredible to me. People always say of “The West Wing,” “Are there any moments that stick out?” And for many of us, it was the day Yo-Yo Ma came, and he was playing that piece, and he was the most generous, unpretentious human being. He came out into a room full of probably a hundred background artists, with his extraordinary cello, and he said: “Does anyone want to play this? Does anyone want to hold it?” He’s all about breaking down the lines of hierarchy and pretension in his classical music world.That day, he was playing that piece and I’m supposed to be having this emotional breakdown. You’re shooting him first, and you have a recording of it, and then at some point you turn around and get to me. He technically doesn’t even need to be there, let alone play it. And take after take after take, he is playing it with his whole heart. It was just astonishing.8. School Plays I really love watching young people perform and navigate instinctively the dilemma of making a spectacle out of themselves. [Laughs, almost diabolically.] I had a weird moment in seventh grade where I was doing a play and it was like this epiphany. I was like: “Oh my God, this is the only thing I’ve ever done that uses everything. When I’m reading a book, I’m shutting off my body. When I’m doing math, I’m shutting off my heart.” And I fell in love with “this is everything” — this is your heart and your brain and your body. You know, we have all these sports leagues and I really believe there should be acting leagues.9. “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman It came out 30-some years ago. What he was talking about was how the values of entertainment have distorted the way we conduct public discourse to our detriment. The problem isn’t the obvious forms of fascism — that people are going to start burning books. The problem is people are going to be so distracted they don’t care about books anymore. There’s a big part of the book that says that television is at its most dangerous when it is pretending to be edifying. It’s basically a condemnation of everything that I mistakenly get celebrated for.10. Ken Burns Documentaries He doesn’t know this, but he’s the only person I’ve ever stalked. I was in New York, and he was walking on the street, and I followed him about 10 blocks. I was doing “A Few Good Men” when “The Civil War” came out, and I remember being blown away by it. But what was striking to me — and I’m contradicting what I said about “Amusing Ourselves to Death” — was this power of visual storytelling to communicate the experience of the Civil War in a way a book could not. And then I watched all of them. And they’re hypnotic to me. “The Roosevelts,” “The National Parks,” “Baseball,” “Jazz,” “Country Music.” I am extremely jealous of everybody who has ever done a voice-over for them. I’m [expletive] available. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Jimmy Kimmel to Mike Lindell: The Obsession Is Mutual

      by

      “Mike Lindell doesn’t seem to understand I’m his biggest fan,” Kimmel said of the MyPillow C.E.O. “I have no idea what he is doing, but I love it.”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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘Machines, Vaccines and Me’Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow, is a frequent target of late-night hosts who skewer him for supporting former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. Having been barred from Twitter over those claims, Lindell launched his own social media platform on Monday with a livestream set to last 48 hours. Jimmy Kimmel’s name has come up more than a few times during what he described as Lindell’s “yellathon.”“It’s quite a production. Phones are ringing, there are crank calls pouring in, the lights went out. He kept ranting and raving about the same things over and over again — machines, vaccines and me,” Kimmel said.“A lot of people said the C.E.O. of a pillow company couldn’t successfully launch a major social media site, and those people were 100 percent correct.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s been going nonstop since 7 o’clock this morning. In 17 hours, he’s taken maybe two breaths. At one point he claimed they had 75 million people watching. Even Trump was like, ‘Oh, please, quit exaggerating.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s like the Jerry Lewis telethon if Jerry was on a public access channel and crack.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“What Mike Lindell doesn’t seem to understand is I’m his biggest fan. I have no idea what he is doing, but I love it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Of course I would have him on our show, under two conditions. Number one, he has to actually come into our studio — I need to see him in person. I want to smell the knackwurst in his mustache. And number two, I would like to conduct our interview in a bed, surrounded by pillows. Just me and Mike snuggled up side by side in a California king surrounded by sacks of goose feathers.” — JIMMY KIMMELSunday Night SpecialPresident Biden and former President Barack Obama appeared alongside several celebrities on an NBC special Sunday night encouraging Americans to get vaccinated.“Almost no one watched that special. It had very low ratings. Why would we? We already had a special to promote the vaccine — it’s called the news every day for the past 13 months.”— JIMMY KIMMEL“The stars turned out in force to promote the vaccine, from Kumail Nanjiani and Ellen Pompeo, to Amanda Seyfried and Jane Seymour. And you can trust Jane Seymour, because she’s a medicine woman.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Another highlight came when Dr. Anthony Fauci was interviewed by actor Matthew McConaughey. Wow, the sexiest man alive was interviewed by Matthew McConaughey!” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Life on Mars Edition)“NASA made history today with a successful helicopter flight on Mars. This marks the very first time an aircraft has been flown on another planet. ‘Helicopters on Mars’ — sounds like a band Jude Law was in at school.” — JAMES CORDEN“That’s right, a little helicopter detached from a rover and now they’re both exploring Mars. Or as Pixar put it, ‘Sold!’” — JIMMY FALLON“The flight lasted a total of 30 seconds. The men on the team said it was a complete success while the women agreed so they wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings.” — JIMMY FALLON“It wasn’t a long flight, it lasted just 30 seconds and reached an altitude of about 10 feet. It may not sound like a lot, but 10 feet means Ingenuity can dunk.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I say they’ve got two more flights before it ends up stuck on the neighbor’s roof.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Today’s mission was the first of several, because the helicopter could make as many as five flights in the coming weeks — although, to save a couple bucks, one of those flights has a layover in Charlotte.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe stand-up comic Tig Notaro told Jimmy Fallon all about her role in Zack Snyder’s new zombie film, “Army of the Dead.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightCher will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutThe closure of the ArcLight chain includes the Cinerama Dome, which was first shuttered when the pandemic hit.Kate Warren for The New York TimesThe director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Old Guard,” “Love & Basketball”) writes that the loss of ArcLight theaters in Los Angeles will be felt by filmmakers as much as by moviegoers. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Brooklyn Man Finds New Life in Crime (Writing)

      by

      It was over lunch in 2013 that the literary agent Eric Simonoff asked Jonathan Ames, “So what do you want to do with your writing career?”Ames replied, “Have you read Richard Stark?”Simonoff confessed that he had not. Moreover, he had no idea who Richard Stark was.“Well,” Ames explained to his old friend and new agent, “I’d like to be like Richard Stark.”Richard Stark is one of the pseudonyms for the prolific writer Donald Westlake who, under that name, published over 20 novels centered on a character named Parker. The Parker series, with titles like “The Hunter,” “Butcher’s Moon” and “Nobody Runs Forever,” features a classic antihero: a no-nonsense criminal who speaks tersely and acts decisively, most often with his fists.Ames, in his 20-year writing career, had written perhaps most frequently about a character named “Jonathan Ames.” Before he departed New York for a television job in Los Angeles in 2014, he was well known in his hometown as an essayist, novelist, performer and bon vivant. “Jonathan Ames” turned up as the lead in his comedic confessional essays, collected in books like “What’s Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer,” and in the short story “Bored to Death,” which in 2009 became an HBO comedy series starring Jason Schwartzman. On that show, Schwartzman is a neurotic Brooklyn writer who dreams of writing pulp novels and who, inspired by his love of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, decides to advertise his services as an amateur private detective.“We were shooting the first season and we were coming up with the graphics for the opening, which showed a pulp novel called ‘Bored to Death’ opening up and showing the actual words of my story,” Ames, 57, said this month over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “I said, ‘Oh my God, this is so cool. I wish I was writing books with covers like that.’ And one of the writers said to me, ‘Jonathan, you have a TV show now.’”The implication, of course, being that whatever rung on the literary ladder that involves writing pulp fiction, Ames, a newly minted HBO showrunner, had long since climbed past it. “But he picked up on something,” said Ames. “The fact that, even then, my Holy Grail was to be writing crime novels.”This month, Ames has captured his personal Holy Grail, in the form of a detective novel titled “A Man Named Doll.” Published by Mulholland Books, it is the first in a proposed series (there’s already a Netflix film in the works) about a Los Angeles-based ex-cop and private detective named Happy Doll. (No spoilers, but suffice to say that the circumstances leading to his unusual first name are not, themselves, happy.)“A Man Named Doll” comes out on April 20.Crime readers may notice some superficial similarities between Doll and the kind of fabled gumshoes that Ames has long been enamored with — figures like Chandler’s Philip Marlowe or Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, or quick-fisted pulp avatars like Parker or Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. But it quickly becomes clear that Happy owes more to the rumpled Marlowe played by Elliott Gould in Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” than to any hard-boiled toughs inhabited by Humphrey Bogart.Doll, for example, may be the first private detective in Los Angeles who’s in Freudian analysis five days a week. He is certainly the first one to describe his relationship with his beloved dog as “disturbed,” saying, “We’re like two old-fashioned closeted bachelors who cohabitate and don’t think the rest of the world knows we’re lovers.” Doll is less Jack Reacher than, well, Jonathan Ames.“He’s a neurotic Reacher with the soul of a poet,” said Joshua Kendall, the editorial director of Mulholland. When he received “A Man Named Doll,” he said, he recognized it as perfect for Mulholland, an imprint that specializes in both contemporary and classic genre fiction. But he also realized that “one of the great pleasures of the book is seeing the Ames pop out.”Of Ames’s detour toward crime writing, Simonoff, his literary agent, said, “He was clearly called in this direction. But the novel also exhibits the charm and quirkiness of classic Jonathan Ames. There’s a sweetness to it that isn’t there in the typical Parker novel.” (Since their lunch, Simonoff has happily brushed up on his Westlake.)Ames has spent most of his decades-long literary career bed-hopping promiscuously between forms and mediums: He’s been genre-fluid but pulp-curious.“Bored to Death” was a warmly satirical take on hard-boiled themes, set against a hipster Brooklyn backdrop. And on assignment from the online publication Byliner, Ames wrote a novella-length story, “You Were Never Really Here,” which was adapted into a dark and violent film directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Joaquin Phoenix that premiered at Cannes in 2017. With that story, Ames said, “I did have this goal of not being funny at all. I just wanted to write something really lean and dark.” He loved the challenge of creating “an express train of a plot, where you can’t put it down.”There is a well-worn piece of writing advice, often traced to Aristotle, that contends that the perfect ending of any story should be surprising yet inevitable, and the fact that Ames has written a detective novel seems exactly that: surprising yet inevitable.“At a certain point in my life, starting back in the ’80s, I began to read almost entirely crime fiction,” Ames said. “You’re studying the form — you’re kind of doing an apprenticeship.”Adam Amengual for The New York TimesOther authors have veered unexpectedly into crime writing, either as a commercial diversion or out of love for the form. Graham Greene famously classified certain of his novels as “entertainments.” (Ames said, “I often liked the entertainments best of all.”) Denis Johnson wrote the pulp homage “Nobody Move,” and the Booker Prize winner John Banville wrote crime fiction as Benjamin Black.Yet for Ames, “A Man Named Doll” is not a dalliance with detective fiction so much as the consummation of a decades-long courtship. “At a certain point in my life, starting back in the ’80s, I began to read almost entirely crime fiction,” he said. “You’re studying the form — you’re kind of doing an apprenticeship.”“A Man Named Doll” feels both like the culmination of that apprenticeship and the logical successor to his comedic autobiographical writing, in which, after all, he cast himself as a lone figure roaming in the naked city, a broken romantic embroiled in adventures that often veered toward the illicit.Ames’s former teacher, Joyce Carol Oates, once gave a quote to The Paris Review that has stuck with him. Oates, he recalled, had said that, in “Ulysses,” James Joyce had used the structure of the “Odyssey” as “his bridge to get his soldiers across.”For him, pulp has become that bridge, he said.“The soldiers being my wish as a writer to observe, to describe, to form sentences, to entertain and to share my fears, my hopes, my, you know, despair — and maybe some of my courage. It’s important,” Ames added, “to try and pass on courage to the reader.”Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: The Oscars and a Greta Thunberg Documentary

      by

      This year’s Academy Awards ceremony airs on ABC. And PBS airs a three-part documentary pegged to Earth Day.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, April 19-25. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (1958) 6:30 p.m. on TCM. A new documentary about Ernest Hemingway from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick has Hemingway back in the spotlight (in certain circles, at least). A few years before his death in 1961, the directors John Sturges and Fred Zinnemann came out with this Hollywood adaptation of Hemingway’s famous novella “The Old Man and the Sea.” Spencer Tracy plays the old man of the title, an aging fisher who scuffles with an enormous marlin in Cuban waters. Tracy gives “an affecting demonstration of primal fortitude,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1958 review for The New York Times. But the film at large is flawed, Crowther said, in part because “an essential feeling of the sweep and surge of the open sea is not achieved in precise and placid pictures that obviously were shot in a studio tank.” Call it imitation crab.SELMA (2014) 5:20 p.m. on FXM. David Oyelowo — whose directorial debut, “The Water Man,” is expected to be released early next month — plays the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in this historical drama about civil rights activists’ famous march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery in 1965. Oyelowo is accompanied by a formidable ensemble cast, which includes Oprah Winfrey, André Holland, Wendell Pierce, Tessa Thompson and Lorraine Toussaint. Ava DuVernay, who directed, “writes history with passionate clarity and blazing conviction,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “Even if you think you know what’s coming,” Scott added, “‘Selma’ hums with suspense and surprise.”TuesdayINDEPENDENT LENS: PHILLY D.A. 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, is part of a wave of progressive prosecutors who have been elected across the country in recent years. This multipart documentary from the filmmakers Ted Passon and Yoni Brook, airing as part of PBS’s “Independent Lens” series, looks at the inner workings of Krasner’s office and the ways he and his team pursue criminal-justice reform.WednesdaySKYFALL (2012) 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on BBC America. A year has gone by since life changed, and expectations shifted, for us all. This refers, of course, to the delay of “No Time To Die,” the newest James Bond movie, which was supposed to come out in April 2020 before being postponed by the pandemic. It’s now planned for release this fall. In the meantime, fans can revisit this highly regarded entry in the decades-old franchise, which pits Daniel Craig’s Bond against a tech-fluent villain played by Javier Bardem.ThursdayGreta Thunberg in “Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World.”Jon Sayers/BBC StudiosGRETA THUNBERG: A YEAR TO CHANGE THE WORLD 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Thursday is Earth Day. After audiences potentially do something proactive on behalf of the environment, they can settle down, relax and watch this three-part documentary about the climate activist Greta Thunberg. While the program, produced by the BBC, bears Thunberg’s name, it’s not a biography; it focuses on her conversations with an array of climate experts, with whom she shares the screen. “You are listening to me right now, but I don’t want that,” Thunberg says at the start. “I don’t want you to listen to me — I want you to listen to the science.”FridayA BLACK LADY SKETCH SHOW 11 p.m. on HBO. The first season of this show, created by Robin Thede and co-executive produced by Issa Rae, found comedy in a fake courtroom and an imagined, comically specific support group, in an airplane and at a wedding altar. The second season, which debuts Friday night, brings a fresh set of sketches and a slate of celebrity guests that includes the actress Gabrielle Union and the singer Miguel.SaturdayA scene from “Moana.”DisneyMOANA (2016) 6:50 p.m. on Freeform. One of the beauties of animation is the way that it allows voice actors to step into characters completely different from themselves: Eddie Murphy can play a donkey; Owen Wilson can play a talking car. There’s less of a gap between voice and onscreen presence with Dwayne Johnson’s character in “Moana,” though: He plays an impossibly muscular version of the Polynesian demigod Maui whose biceps are about the size of his head. Maui accompanies Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho), the daughter of a village chief, on a quest to save her island, and the environment. In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott called the film’s plot “a mélange of updated folklore, contemporary eco-spiritualism and tried-and-true Disney-Pixar formula.” There are, he added, “some touching and amusing zigzags on the way to the film’s sweet and affirmative conclusion.”SundayTHE OSCARS 8 p.m. on ABC. There are several ways that this year’s Academy Awards ceremony could make history. There’s a possibility that all four acting categories could be awarded to people of color. Chloé Zhao, the filmmaker behind “Nomadland,” could become only the second woman to win an Academy Award for best director (and the first Chinese woman, and the first woman of color, to win that award). Regardless of the winners, this ceremony is recognizing films released during a year in which movie theaters were largely closed, and many big-budget films were pulled from release and pushed to future dates. The best picture nominees are “Minari,” “Nomadland,” “Promising Young Woman,” “The Father,” “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Mank,” “Sound of Metal” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” For results and commentary throughout the evening, follow live coverage on The Times’s app or website.Carey Mulligan in “My Grandparents’ War.” Wild PicturesMY GRANDPARENTS’ WAR 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Carey Mulligan is up for the best actress award at Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony, for her role in “Promising Young Woman.” Over on PBS, she’ll be featured in very different surroundings, as the guest on the Season 2 finale episode of “My Grandparents’ War.” The program follows famous people as they learn about their grandparents’ experiences during World War II. This episode finds Mulligan in Japan, where she explores her grandfather’s time as a British naval officer. More