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      Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen's Podcast to Become a Book

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      Crown is publishing “Renegades: Born in the USA,” a book adaptation of the podcast conversations.In “Renegades,” a podcast collaboration between Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, the former president acknowledged that it was, at a glance, an odd partnership.“On the surface, Bruce and I don’t have a lot in common,” he said. “He’s a white guy from a small town in Jersey; I’m a Black guy of mixed race, born in Hawaii, with a childhood that took me around the world. He’s a rock ‘n’ roll icon. I’m a lawyer and politician — not as cool.”But they have become vacation buddies and avid collaborators whose podcast — a series of frank conversations about race, fatherhood, social justice and American identity — became one of the podcasts with the most listeners around the world on Spotify.Now, they will be co-authors of sorts, with the coming release of a book of their conversations. This October, Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, is publishing “Renegades: Born in the USA,” a book adaptation of the podcast. The 320-page book includes introductions by Obama and Springsteen, more than 350 photos and illustrations, and archival material such as Springsteen’s handwritten lyrics and Obama’s annotated speeches.In his introduction, Obama describes how the conversations grew out of “our ongoing effort to figure out how it is that we got here, and how we can tell a more unifying story that starts to close the gap between America’s ideals and its reality.”As salable book ideas go, a collaboration between a rock star and a former president seems a sure bet. (Crown is suggesting a list price of $50 in the United States and $65 in Canada.)Springsteen’s memoir, “Born to Run,” which was released by Simon & Schuster in 2016, was a hit, selling nearly half a million hardcover copies in its first few months on sale. Obama’s 2020 memoir, “A Promised Land,” which was published by Crown, has sold 8.2 million copies globally, and nearly five million in North America.The book version of “Renegades” also marks the latest release from the Obamas’ growing media empire. It is being produced in partnership with Higher Ground, the company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, which has struck exclusive production deals with Netflix for film and television and with Spotify for podcasts. The Obamas sold their memoirs to Crown in 2017 for a record-breaking $65 million. Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming,” sold more than 16 million copies globally since its release in 2018.Obama and Springsteen got to know each other in 2008 while Obama was campaigning, and became friends over the years. Springsteen performed at the White House in January 2017, as Obama was preparing to leave office.In their podcast conversations, the pair largely focused on personal stories about their lives and avoided partisan politics, but spoke generally about the urgent need to understand and address divisions in American society.“This is a time of vigilance when who we are is being seriously tested,” Springsteen writes in his introduction to “Renegades.” “Hard conversations about who we are and who we want to become can perhaps serve as a small guiding map for some of our fellow citizens.” More

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      Push to ‘Free Britney’ Gains Steam on Capitol Hill

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      As lawmakers share social media posts and messages of solidarity, activists hope the increased attention on Britney Spears’s conservatorship case will prompt legislative change.In the weeks since Britney Spears publicly denounced the long-running legal arrangement that has controlled her life, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have jumped in to declare their support.Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, dedicated the latest episode of his podcast to the conservatorship, which has limited Ms. Spears’s decision-making and finances since 2008. “I am squarely and unequivocally in the camp of #FreeBritney,” he said, referring to the movement among her fans and fellow celebrities pushing for the end of the arrangement.Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, excoriated the case as “the craziest” he had “seen in a long time.”And the political arm of the House Republican caucus seized the moment to fund-raise, sending texts that described Ms. Spears as “a victim of toxic gov’t overreach & censorship.”Advocates are embracing the increased attention from members of Congress, saying that the case raises issues of civil liberties as well as the potential for such legal mechanisms to be abused, including by forcing the use of birth control, as Ms. Spears has contended. But they are also urging lawmakers to enact legislative change that could help those trapped in exploitative arrangements.“It’s always attractive for lawmakers to send out tweets,” said Cassandra Dumas, a founder of Free Britney America, which is based in Washington. “But my call to our lawmakers is, actions speak louder than words.”Ms. Dumas said that while members of her group initially united over Ms. Spears’s case, they were eager to push for changes that would help others in similar situations but who do not have access to the same resources.Another challenge is understanding how pervasive any abuse might be, advocates said.“We don’t even know how many people are in conservatorships and guardianships,” said Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s disability rights program. “We don’t know how long they’ve been there in them. We don’t know whether they want to be there. We don’t know why they’re there. We don’t know whether they have their own lawyers.”Free Britney America has worked with members of Congress in recent weeks, including Representative Charlie Crist, Democrat of Florida, whose office said he would soon introduce bipartisan legislation pressing for more rights and more transparency under such legal agreements.Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, for their part, have homed in on the lack of data about the prevalence of guardianships and conservatorships. In a letter, they urged the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department to work on closing that gap.In her testimony last month, Ms. Spears revealed that her father, who is her conservator, prevented her from having her IUD removed although she wanted to have more children. The disclosure prompted support from across the political sphere, including leaders at Planned Parenthood and Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina.“It’s insane you can force a woman to basically sterilize herself under the guise of protection,” Ms. Mace tweeted. “If this is happening to Britney Spears, how many other women across the country are silently suffering?” More

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      At the White House, Olivia Rodrigo Says Vaccines Are ‘Good 4 U’

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      The pop star with the No. 1 album in the country joined the Biden administration’s efforts to encourage the young and unvaccinated to get their shots.WASHINGTON — Nixon and Elvis. Trump and Kanye. Biden and Olivia.On Wednesday, Olivia Rodrigo, the 18-year-old pop star with the No. 1 album in the country, visited the White House and joined the Biden administration’s efforts to use the young and influential to reach the young and unvaccinated.“It’s important to have conversations with friends and family members,” Ms. Rodrigo said, reading from prepared remarks during a short appearance in the White House briefing room, “and actually get to a vaccination site, which you can do more easily than ever before.”The White House could not have scripted it better. (In fact, White House officials helped her craft her remarks, according to an administration official.) The “Good 4 U” singer has millions of followers on social media who hang on her every word, and she is part of a growing list of creators, celebrities and influential people who are interested in working with the White House to deliver a pro-vaccine message directly to their respective communities.Rob Flaherty, the White House director of digital strategy, has been organizing an effort to reach out to people like Ms. Rodrigo and invite them to Washington to create content. The plans for bringing her to the White House, Mr. Flaherty said in an interview, began in June. After she arrived, Ms. Rodrigo wandered the halls of the West Wing with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, stopping by desks and chatting with officials before it was time to film a series of educational videos with President Biden.“Not every 18-year-old uses their time to come do this,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said from the lectern.Administration officials are hoping the time investment pays off. In recent weeks, as the federal strategy has shifted to more personalized efforts to reach unvaccinated people, the White House has recruited YouTube stars, social media influencers and celebrities who can send the messaging to their own channels. It has also highlighted efforts by popular dating apps to encourage young singles to promote their vaccination status.Ms. Rodrigo has millions of followers on social media who hang on her every word.Evan Vucci/Associated PressHealthy young adults are historically hard to reach, and the White House has been upfront about the difficulties that officials have faced in persuading those groups to receive a vaccine. Hesitancy can result from a mix of inertia, fear, busy schedules and misinformation.At times, the young stars who have met with Mr. Biden have gone on to directly address those concerns with their followers. In a video titled “I COLLABED WITH PRESIDENT BIDEN! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!” after he interviewed the president in May, Manny MUA, a YouTube star and makeup artist, told his four million followers that he had enjoyed the experience but that getting vaccinated was still a personal choice.“You can do whatever you guys want,” he said in the video, “but I am pro-vaccine.”Mr. Biden’s aides say he is open to taking questions from YouTubers and welcoming celebrities to the White House if it might help sway the unconvinced.“There’s only so much we as a White House can do to stop misinformation,” Mr. Flaherty said. “What we can do is go on offense. That underscores exactly why this work is so important.”Young people under the age of 27 are vaccinated at a lower rate than older people, according to the White House, and they were part of the reason the administration said it fell short of Mr. Biden’s goal of partly vaccinating 70 percent of adults by July 4. Younger people became eligible for immunization later in the vaccine rollout, after other high-priority risk groups, and children aged 12 to 15 became eligible for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine only in mid-May.Across the country overall, providers were administering about 0.55 million doses per day on average, as of Wednesday, about an 84 percent decrease from the peak of 3.38 million reported on April 13.The White House still faces significant challenges in reaching reluctant Americans, particularly in states where officials say they face pressure against evangelizing for a vaccine.After Ms. Rodrigo left the podium, Ms. Psaki was asked about Dr. Michelle Fiscus, a pediatrician and Tennessee’s top vaccination official, who said she was fired from her job after distributing a memo that suggested that some teenagers might be eligible for vaccinations without their parents’ consent. The memo repeated information that has been publicly available on the state Health Department’s website for years.“We continue to see young people hit by the virus,” Ms. Psaki said, “and we’ve been crystal clear that we stand against any effort that would politicize our country’s pandemic response and recovery from Covid-19.” More

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      A Teenager’s ‘Hannibal’ Fan Art Will Hang in the U.S. Capitol

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      Representative Andy Kim of New Jersey, who picked the painting to represent his district in the Capitol, did not know it was inspired by a canceled TV show.To the untrained eye, the Cubist artwork painted by Kathleen Palmer, a senior at Shawnee High School in New Jersey, would appear to show two men looking at each other.One is writing in a notebook, the other has antlers.But when Representative Andy Kim, a Democrat whose district includes the high school, included a photo of Palmer’s creation in a tweet announcing that the teenager had won an art competition that would earn the painting a spot in the U.S. Capitol, many people saw something else entirely: fan art inspired by the long-canceled NBC show “Hannibal,” nodding to a love story between two male characters, being recognized by the federal government.“I didn’t know that it was related to a TV show,” Mr. Kim, who picked the winning painting from his district, said on Friday. “I just thought it was really beautiful, well executed, and it was really striking.”The painting is titled “Dolce,” after an episode from the third and final season of “Hannibal.” The show, which went off the air in 2015, explored the relationship between the cannibalistic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, a character made famous by Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs,” and Will Graham, a young F.B.I. agent who can empathize with serial killers.Palmer, who uses they and them pronouns, began watching the show late last year after seeing clips from the series on TikTok. It took Palmer four weeks to finish the painting — a 16-by-20-inch oil on canvas, their first work in a Cubist style — completing the final details by Dec. 23.“It was just a casual art-class project,” Palmer, 17, said on Friday. “I didn’t expect it to go this far.”The painting reflects the dynamic between the characters through its use of color, Palmer said. The warm red tones on Hannibal’s side of the painting evoke the serial killer’s bloodlust and passion, while Will’s cool blues signify how he is both hunting and being hunted in the pair’s cat-and-mouse game.The U.S. Capitol is an unusually high-profile space to display fan art, which is typically a labor of love. The art form is often long on passion but short on recognition outside generally self-contained fan communities.Fans inspired by their favorite books, shows, games and movies have long drawn in their own notebooks, with zines — independent, usually self-published magazines — being one of the few ways to get the artwork published in the pre-internet world. Others write fan fiction, creating their own scripts and spinning new stories with dialogue they want to see.But the rise of blogging platforms like LiveJournal and Tumblr allowed obsessive fans to find one another more easily than ever, putting their work in front of appreciative, like-minded audiences and inspiring more artists to take part.Sometimes the artwork is done in tribute, taking beloved characters and presenting them in a new light based on the artist’s personal style. At other times, fans take those beloved characters and thrust them into new contexts, remixing the source material as they desire.A common form that takes appears in shipping, in which two characters are imagined in a romantic relationship or an audience supports them being together. It often happens with two characters who have undeniable chemistry, even if the source material doesn’t come right out and say it. (The term “slash” is used for same-sex relationships, and “slashfic” for art and writing that places them together.)The two characters featured in Palmer’s painting, Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, have long been shipped by “Hannibal” fans, who have given the pair a couple nickname: “Hannigram.”“I guess I did incorporate that into the painting,” Palmer said of the slashfic, adding that it’s heavily implied in the show that the characters have a romantic spark.The Congressional Art Competition, now in its 40th year, is sponsored by the Congressional Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on educating the public about Congress. The judging process is run by U.S. representatives. In the spring, a winner is picked from each of the 435 congressional districts that choose to hold the competition.Mr. Kim consulted with six local artists and art enthusiasts for recommendations, but the congressman made the final decision. There were 12 entries in New Jersey’s Third Congressional District, which stretches from the Delaware River to the Jersey Shore. This was the third year that Mr. Kim, who was first elected in 2018, has hosted the competition in his district.Each of the winning paintings is displayed in a tunnel between the House of Representatives and a congressional office building, according to Mark N. Strand, the president of the Congressional Institute.“It’s a great opportunity to have kids show their art to the world,” Mr. Strand said on Friday. “And it’s one of the most bipartisan things members can do.”Palmer started making art about six years ago, beginning with drawing. Every once in a while, Palmer said, they would fall off the wagon, but while forced to stay home during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, they rediscovered art as a passion.“I really like making beautiful things,” Palmer said on Friday. “It’s really gratifying to make beauty.”Palmer said that the unexpected support from the competition had inspired them to keep working at their art, especially as they prepare to enter Ohio University as a studio arts major.“It’s been a big motivation,” Palmer said of winning the competition. “Being validated in this scale is really, really fantastic. It’s lit the fire underneath me to paint more and work on my skills more.” More

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      in Theater

      Cultural Institutions Still Waiting for $16 Billion in Federal Aid

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      The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program has been marred by delays, but officials say some applicants could learn next week if they have been approved for aid.Five months after Congress approved a $16 billion federal aid program to help live performance venues and cultural institutions survive the pandemic, more than 12,000 applicants have sought help but no money has been disbursed yet.But some venue owners, theater producers and museum officials — eager, and in cases desperate, for financial help after more than a year of steep pandemic losses — could soon learn if help is on the way. The Small Business Administration, which runs the program, said in a statement Friday that the highest-priority applicants — those that lost 90 percent of their revenue compared to the prior year — are tentatively scheduled to receive notices about the fate of their applications beginning next week.But some business owners are wary of the promise after weeks of delay and confusion over the initiative, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which many had cheered as a lifeline. Each day applicants vent their frustrations on an online forum, regularly polling one another on whether any applications have yet been officially approved or rejected.“They’re hanging on by a thread right now,” said Meredith Lynsey Schade, a theater producer and nonprofit leader who helps answer questions from grant applicants on the forum. “They’re on life support, and every day they’re told, ‘just a little bit longer.’”At a news conference on Friday in Times Square, not far from the TKTS booth that sells discounted Broadway tickets, Senator Chuck Schumer and Broadway industry leaders celebrated the program as a savior for the hard-hit performing arts sector.“Right now $16 billion is on the way to the theater district, our theater industry, our live venues and our cultural institutions in New York and across the country,” Senator Schumer said. He did not address the delays that have hampered the application process or the frustrations of those awaiting relief.In response to a question about the program’s persistent delays, a spokesman for Senator Schumer, Angelo Roefaro, said “We are urging an ASAP release of these federal dollars.”Senator Chuck Schumer spoke about the promised aid at a news conference on Friday with Broadway officials and performers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNow that more theaters, concert halls and nightclubs are getting the green light to reopen across the country, new expenses are starting to mount, even as organizations try to figure out how to handle the losses of the past year.Forty Broadway shows are expected to open during the 2021-22 season, Mr. Schumer said at the news conference, some of them as early as September. In recent days, tickets have gone on sale for 19 shows, he said.Grant applications from live venue operators or promoters make up more than 40 percent of the 12,213 funding applications that were submitted as of earlier this week, according to data from the Small Business Association; theatrical producers make up about 7 percent of that total. The program offers grants worth 45 percent of applicants’ prepandemic gross earned annual revenue, up to $10 million.As Broadway shows prepare for reopenings beginning in September, producers and theater owners are among the applicants waiting anxiously for funding. Broadway applicants will most likely be considered in the highest priority window to receive the grant funds because they generally lost the vast majority of their revenue when theaters shut down, said Ms. Schade, who was a producer on two Broadway shows that were running at the start of the shutdown, “Hadestown” and “The Inheritance.”Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said in an interview that the Small Business Administration had told the group that money would start coming in by the end of the month, and that the industry understands “how government works.” Ms. St. Martin said that the agency had to take some time to familiarize itself with the Broadway industry.“If we don’t get some money soon I may have different things to say,” she said, “but I think they’re being extremely cooperative and supportive of our industry and trying to learn it while also handing out money.”The application process for the grant money has been chaotic from the start: On what was supposed to have been day one for people to submit applications, the online system broke down and the agency’s inspector general sent out an alert warning of “serious concerns” with the program’s waste and fraud controls.In its statement on Friday, the Small Business Administration acknowledged that there continues to be “some fine-tuning of technical components of the program” but said the agency is “committed to quickly and efficiently” disbursing funds to venues and organizations in need. More

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      Filmmaker’s Suit Says A&E Networks Suppressed ‘Watergate’ Series

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      The director, Charles Ferguson, said in a lawsuit that an executive was concerned about the “negative reaction it would provoke among Trump supporters and the Trump administration.”“Watergate,” a four-hour documentary examining the scandal that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency, had its world premiere in 2018 at the Telluride Film Festival, an event known to foretell future Oscar nominations. It went on to be shown at the New York Film Festival and several others, collecting positive reviews that highlighted allusions the series made to the Trump presidency.It aired on the History Channel over three days in early November, just before the 2018 midterm elections. To the filmmaker’s surprise, it was never broadcast on American television again.The writer and director of the documentary, the award-winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson, is now suing the company that owns the History Channel, A&E Networks, asserting it suppressed the dissemination of his mini-series because it was worried about potential backlash to allusions the documentary makes to the Trump White House.In the lawsuit filed Friday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Ferguson accuses the company of attempting to delay the documentary until after the 2018 midterm elections because a History Channel executive feared it would offend the White House and Trump supporters.“He was concerned about the impact of ‘Watergate’ upon ratings in ‘red states,’” the lawsuit said of the executive, Eli Lehrer, “as well as the negative reaction it would provoke among Trump supporters and the Trump administration.”Mr. Ferguson resisted that plan, and the mini-series ultimately aired shortly before Election Day. But the filmmaker contends the documentary was given short shrift, despite acclaim in the film industry and previous assurances that it would receive “extremely prominent treatment.”The lawsuit describes the treatment of the documentary as part of a “pattern and practice of censorship and suppression of documentary content” at A&E Networks, and cites several others that it says were subject to attempted manipulation for political or economic reasons.A&E called the lawsuit meritless and the assertion that the documentary was suppressed “absurd,” saying its decision to not rebroadcast it additional times was based on lower than expected ratings.In a statement, the company said it has routinely given a platform to storytellers “to present their unvarnished vision without regard for partisan politics.” It pointed to its partnership with former President Bill Clinton, formed during the Trump administration, to produce a documentary series about the American presidency and the fact that a subsidiary, Propagate, had produced the four-part docu-series “Hillary,” on the life of Hillary Clinton.“A&E invested millions of dollars in this project and promoted it extensively,” the company said of “Watergate” in its statement. “Among other efforts, we hired multiple outside PR agencies, provided advance screeners to the press, and submitted it to film festivals and for awards consideration.”Charles Ferguson, whose film “Inside Job” won an Oscar in 2011, says that A&E Networks did not fulfill a promise to fully promote his documentary on the Watergate scandal.Associated PressMr. Ferguson’s “Watergate” is a deep dive into events set off by the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters and the cover up by the Nixon administration. It includes interviews with people who were involved in the events — such as John Dean, President Nixon’s White House counsel — as well as reporters who covered them, including Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Lesley Stahl. The New York Times’s co-chief film critic, A.O. Scott, wrote that the documentary tells a story that is “part political thriller and part courtroom drama, with moments of Shakespearean grandeur and swerves into stumblebum comedy,” though other reviews panned the film’s re-creations by actors.Mr. Ferguson, who is best known for his Oscar-winning 2010 documentary “Inside Job,” said that when he started pitching the project in 2015, he imagined it as a straightforward “historical detective story.” But, the suit says, a drumbeat of events involving the Trump administration made him realize the documentary’s renewed political relevance. In 2017, he watched as Mr. Trump fired his F.B.I. director, as the Justice Department appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials, and as the potential for impeachment loomed.The series — which Mr. Ferguson said cost about $4.5 million to produce — does not mention Mr. Trump’s name, but the documentary’s subtitle, “How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President,” was a nod toward his administration.The lawsuit hinges on a conversation between Mr. Ferguson and A&E executives in June 2018, before the film was released. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Lehrer, executive vice president and head of programming at the History Channel, said at that meeting that he would seek to delay the premiere of “Watergate” and “sharply lower” its publicity profile, expressing concern about its relevance to the politics of the moment and the reaction it would provoke from the Trump administration and Trump supporters.Mr. Ferguson has worked to collect pieces of evidence to support his contentions, among them an email he provided to The New York Times in which Mr. Lehrer acknowledged discussing the bipartisan nature of the network’s audience. In the email, Mr. Lehrer also denied the network was trying to suppress the documentary, writing that the rationale for exploring different airdates was to avoid the series getting swallowed up by heavy sports programming and election coverage.Mr. Ferguson’s contract did not specify how many times the network would show the documentary or whether it would receive theatrical distribution, though successful ones are typically broadcast multiple times.Nielsen ratings from the time show that “Watergate” earned only 529,000 viewers when it aired, including seven days of delayed viewing, compared to History Channel’s other multi-episode documentaries like “Grant” which bowed in May to 4.4 million viewers, or “Washington,” which drew an audience of 3.3 million in February 2020.Had the ratings been stronger, A&E says, it would have broadcast the series multiple times and it would have had a greater chance of securing additional licenses either with a streaming service or with international distributors.“The fact is that Watergate, which premiered in prime time on Mr. Ferguson’s desired date, drastically underachieved in the ratings, which was disappointing to all of us,” the company said in its statement.Mr. Ferguson’s documentary chronicles the aftermath of the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, which started the downfall of the Nixon presidency.  Associated PressBut the lawsuit says A&E Networks damaged Mr. Ferguson financially by, among other things, failing to make any “meaningful” distribution deals or arrange for advertising outside of the network. It says Mr. Ferguson traded a lower-than-normal director’s fee in his contract for a higher cut of the royalties, believing that if the documentary was successful, the majority of the viewership revenue would stem from sales to streaming services, foreign cable channels and other customers.One of the A&E executives named as a defendant, Michael Stiller — the vice president of programming and development at the History Channel — had told Mr. Ferguson that there would be rebroadcasts and required him to make slightly shorter versions of the episodes for daytime slots, but those never occurred, according to the lawsuit.The company noted the documentary is available on several services, which include iTunes, Amazon Prime Video and Google Play, including its own video-on-demand platform, History Vault.Mr. Ferguson’s lawsuit argues that the company executives interfered with his contract, and defamed him by telling industry executives he was difficult to work with, thereby costing him work. In addition to Mr. Lehrer and Mr. Stiller, the other named defendants include Robert Sharenow, the network’s president of programming, and Molly Thompson, its former head of documentary films. Ms. Thompson declined to comment. Mr. Lehrer, Mr. Stiller and Mr. Sharenow did not respond to requests for comment.The lawsuit cites several examples where Mr. Ferguson said he learned about conflicts between A&E executives and documentary filmmakers, including a dispute concerning “Gretchen Carlson: Breaking the Silence,” a 2019 documentary on Lifetime about sexual harassment in working-class industries. The suit says A&E executives questioned including information about McDonald’s, an advertiser. The information was ultimately included after the producers fought for it, but the episode was only aired once, on a Saturday at 10 p.m., the lawsuit said. A spokeswoman for Ms. Carlson declined to comment.The lawsuit also says Mr. Ferguson learned about a dispute regarding a 2019 A&E documentary called “Biography: The Trump Dynasty” that examines Mr. Trump’s life and family history. According to the lawsuit, A&E executives wanted the production company behind the documentary, Left/Right Productions, to add in the voice of a “Trump apologist” who could “justify” aspects of Mr. Trump’s background, a request that the suit says generated “significant tensions” between the network executives and the production company executives.Left/Right, which works with The New York Times on some documentary productions, did not respond to requests for comment. The Times did not have a role in any of the programming cited in Mr. Ferguson’s suit.Jack Begg contributed research. More

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      U.S. Lawmakers Suggest 25 Movies About Latinos to the Film Registry

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyU.S. Lawmakers Suggest 25 Movies About Latinos to the Film RegistryBy diversifying the films added to the national registry, members of Congress hope that more opportunities will open up for Latinos in Hollywood.Salma Hayek during the shooting of “Frida“ (2002), which is on the list of the caucus’s nominees.Credit…Miramax FilmsMarch 8, 2021The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is continuing work it started in January, when it nominated the movie “Selena” for the National Film Registry, with a list of 25 more films it would like to see the registry add.The movies nominated by the caucus last week are from as early as 1982, and they also include films like “Spy Kids” (2001), a comedy featuring a Latino family, and “Frida” (2002), an Oscar-winning movie about the artist Frida Kahlo. The registry typically adds new movies in December.“It is essential that the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry reflect the true diversity of American culture,” the chairman of the caucus, Representative Raul Ruiz, a Democrat from California, said in a statement. “Including more Latino films in the National Film Registry will help elevate Latino stories, promote an inclusive media landscape, and empower Latino filmmakers and storytellers.”Established by Congress in 1988, the registry preserves films that it deems “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Each year, a committee selects 25 films to add.“The Library of Congress is grateful for the nominations from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and for their interest in the National Film Registry,” Brett Zongker, a spokesman for the Library of Congress, said in a statement, adding, “The registry seeks to ensure the preservation of films that showcase the range and diversity” of America’s film heritage.Latinos make up the largest minority group in the United States, at 18.5 percent of the population. But they continue to be underrepresented in films and on television. A 2019 study from the University of Southern California’s School for Communication and Journalism found that only 4.5 percent of all speaking characters across 1,200 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2018 were Latino.Of the nearly 800 films in the registry, at least 17 are examples of Latino stories. The number of Latino directors in the registry is tiny: There are 11. Of them, nine are men and two are women.Representative Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, led the move for nominations. Latino creators and their stories are often pushed away by gatekeepers of American culture, like Hollywood and the national registry, Castro has said. He added that Latinos are often portrayed negatively in all media — as gang members, drug dealers or hypersexualized women.In a letter to the Librarian of Congress, Castro and Ruiz wrote that such misconceptions and stereotyping in media are significant factors “motivating ongoing anti-Latino sentiment in American society,” affecting areas “from immigration law to the education system to the current public health crisis.”The caucus’s list was developed through feedback from constituents, and movies were also identified by, among others, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the National Hispanic Foundation of the Arts, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the Latinx House (which uses a gender-neutral term for Latinos).“Our stories have often been missing from American film, and even less often been recognized as important cultural pieces in American history,” Castro said in a phone interview. “This is an effort to change that.”The 25 films the caucus chose reflect stories from a variety of nationalities, including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Colombian, Argentine, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan.The list speaks to many parts of the Latino experience, including people who are native to the United States and its territories and those who migrated to the country because of its politics and interventions in Latin America, Theresa Delgadillo, a Chicana and Latina studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview.“It is an important way to influence that diversity effort in an industry,” Delgadillo said about the caucus’s effort.She and other professors, though excited about the effort, were also critical of the list, because, they say, there were few stories about Latinas and L.G.B.T.Q. people. AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen: The Latest Podcast Duo

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The State of PodcastingA Booming IndustryThe Medium for QuarantineThe Voices of ‘Resistance’Growing Up on MicAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBarack Obama and Bruce Springsteen: The Latest Podcast DuoTheir new show, “Renegades: Born in the USA,” features the 44th president and the musician speaking intimately and expansively on topics like race, fatherhood and the country’s painful divisions.The new podcast hosted by Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama is drawn from a series of one-on-one conversations at Springsteen’s home studio last year.Credit…Rob DeMartinPublished More