5:13 PM PT -- Police say the cause of death is unknown at this point and they've launched an investigation.
UPDATE
3:30 PM PT -- We've learned Oakland PD and Fire Dept. responded to a 911 call made around 11:30 AM Monday by Angus Cloud's mother. She reported a "possible overdose," and said Angus did not have a pulse. He was eventually pronounced dead on the scene.
UPDATE
UPDATE
A source close to the family tells us Angus had been battling severe suicidal thoughts after getting back from Ireland, where they laid his father to rest. We're told he was staying with his family as he tried to work through overcoming the grief.
Angus Cloud -- famous from "Euphoria" -- has died at his family's home in Oakland ... TMZ has learned.
The actor's family tells us ... "It is with the heaviest heart that we had to say goodbye to an incredible human today. As an artist, a friend, a brother and a son, Angus was special to all of us in so many ways."
They continue, "Last week he buried his father and intensely struggled with this loss. The only comfort we have is knowing Angus is now reunited with his dad, who was his best friend. Angus was open about his battle with mental health and we hope that his passing can be a reminder to others that they are not alone and should not fight this on their own in silence."
And finally, AC's family says this ... "We hope the world remembers him for his humor, laughter and love for everyone. We ask for privacy at this time as we are still processing this devastating loss."
The family isn't saying anything yet about the exact nature of his death, they seem to be suggesting it had something to do with his struggle to cope with his father's passing.
Angus was a rising star in Hollywood, and will perhaps best be remembered for his breakout role in the hit HBO series -- from 2019 to 2022 he starred as Fezco, the sometimes drug dealer/guardian angel for Zendaya's character, Rue Bennett.
His other credits include roles in movies like "The Line," "North Hollywood" ... to mention appearances and cameos in music videos from artists like Becky G, Karol G and Juice WRLD. He's got 2 projects that are due to come out.
MARCH 2022
TMZ.com
The last time we talked to Angus was in March 2022, when he was staunchly defending his show against accusations that it glorified drug use. In his view, he felt like "Euphoria" only showed the brutal reality that teens and young adults are dealing with in modern-day America.
Angus was just 25.
RIP
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat988lifeline.org.
Paul Reubens, the actor best known for portraying the irrepressible, joyfully childlike Pee-wee Herman, died Sunday night after a private bout of cancer. He was 70.
“Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years,” wrote Reubens in a statement posted to Instagram after his death. “I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”
The Pee-wee Herman character was known for his bright red bowtie, grey suit and flattop haircut, and delivered his well-known catchphrases like “I know you are, what am I?” in a distinctive squeaky, high-pitched voice.
“Last night we said farewell to Paul Reubens, an iconic American actor, comedian, writer and producer whose beloved character Pee-wee Herman delighted generations of children and adults with his positivity, whimsy and belief in the importance of kindness,” wrote Reubens’ estate in the caption. “Paul bravely and privately fought cancer for years with his trademark tenacity and wit. A gifted and prolific talent, he will forever live in the comedy pantheon and in our hearts as a treasured friend and man of remarkable character and generosity of spirit.”
Reubens began his career in the 1970s after joining the Los Angeles live comedy troupe the Groundlings as an improvisational comedian and stage actor. In 1980, he launched “The Pee-wee Herman Show,” a stage production centered on a fictional character he had been developing for years. As Pee-wee became a cult figure, Reubens’ show ran for five sold-out months, and he landed a special at HBO. Reubens also committed to the character in his interviews and public appearances.
In 1985, he teamed with Tim Burton on “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” the character’s feature film debut, which was a critical and commercial success. Reubens returned three years later for a follow-up film, “Big Top Pee-wee,” helmed by Randal Kleiser. The character transitioned to television from 1986 to 1990, on CBS’ weekend morning show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”
Influenced by vintage kids’ shows like “Captain Kangaroo,” the artistically groundbreaking “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” won several Emmys and featured colorful postmodernist set design and music from New Wave icons like Mark Mothersbaugh, Cyndi Lauper and the Residents, along with guest stars including Laurence Fishburne, Natasha Lyonne and Jimmy Smits.
Reubens had already decided to end “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” when his image as a beloved childhood hero was tarnished in 1991 after he was arrested for indecent exposure at an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Fla. At the center of a national sex scandal, Reubens backed away from Pee-wee and began doing press as himself. In the aftermath of the arrest, he did receive support from his fans and other celebrities, and appeared at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, receiving a standing ovation. “Heard any good jokes lately?” he said to the crowd.
He wouldn’t again reprise the iconic role until 2010, when he revived “The Pee-wee Herman Show” on Broadway and made several other appearances, on “WWE Raw” and in a couple of digital sketches for Funny or Die. In 2016, Reubens co-wrote and starred in Netflix’s “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” a sequel to 1988’s “Big Top,” which would serve as Reubens’ final film role before his death.
Throughout his career, Reubens starred in a variety of other projects as well, including Kinka Usher’s superhero comedy “Mystery Men” and Ted Demme’s biographical crime drama “Blow.” He also appeared in “Batman Returns,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Matilda,” and his television credits include “30 Rock,” “The Blacklist,” “Pushing Daisies,” “Hercules,” “Rugrats,” “Reno 911!” and “What We Do in the Shadows.”
In 2002, after turning himself in to the Hollywood division of the Los Angeles Police Department, Reubens was charged with misdemeanor possession of obscene material improperly depicting a child under the age of 18 in sexual conduct. A self-proclaimed collector of erotica, Reubens disagreed with the city’s classification of pornography. His child pornography charges were dropped in 2004 after he agreed to plead guilty to a lesser misdemeanor obscenity charge.
In an interview with NBC News’ Stone Phillips, Herman said in 2005: “One thing I want to make very, very clear, I don’t want anyone for one second to think that I am titillated by images of children. It’s not me. You can say lots of things about me. And you might. The public may think I’m weird. They may think I’m crazy or anything that anyone wants to think about me. That’s all fine. As long as one of the things you’re not thinking about me is that I’m a pedophile. Because that’s not true.”
Before his death, Reubens was developing two Pee-wee Herman projects, one a black comedy titled “The Pee-wee Herman Story” and the other a family adventure film called “Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Movie.”
Article From & Read More ( Paul Reubens, Pee-wee Herman Actor, Dies at 70 After Private Bout of Cancer - Variety )
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X, formerly known as Twitter, has reinstated Kanye West’s account on the social media platform. West will not be able to monetize his account, and no ads will appear next to his posts, the company told the Wall Street Journal on Saturday.
The musician’s account was suspended in December for violating the platform’s rules on inciting violence. The suspension followed multiple antisemitic comments made by West – who has legally changed his name to Ye – including a threat to “Go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” Those statements led to a swift disintegration of multiple business deals, including partnerships with Adidas and luxury fashion house Balenciaga.
Although CNN at the time was unable to determine which tweet had been the final straw, the day before his suspension West tweeted an altered image of the Star of David with a swastika inside.
Twitter has long been embroiled in questions surrounding moderation, with the platform’s CEO Elon Musk describing himself as a “free speech absolutist.” After agreeing to buy the company last October, he said Twitter would “be very reluctant to delete things” and “be very cautious with permanent bans.”
But after West was suspended, Musk tweeted “I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence.”
In April, Twitter’s safety team launched a new content enforcement strategy called “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach,” which focused on “restricting the reach of Tweets that violate our policies by making the content less discoverable.”
This approach, in part, requires the team to “proactively prevent ads from appearing adjacent to content” labeled as violative.
In an update earlier this month, the safety team reported that these labeled tweets “receive 81% less reach or impressions” than non-restricted ones, and that “more than 99.99% of Tweet impressions are from … content that does not violate our rules.”
Twitter’s Violent Speech Policy prohibits inciting and glorifying violence, wishing harm on other people, and threatening others. But it makes some exceptions, including for “figures of speech, satire, or artistic expression when the context is expressing a viewpoint rather than instigating actionable violence or harm.”
“We make sure to evaluate and understand the context behind the conversation before taking action,” the policy states, adding that if a user believes their account was wrongfully suspended, they can submit an appeal.
It’s not clear whether West submitted an appeal, or if something else prompted his account’s reactivation. The musician has yet to post on the platform. CNN has reached out to Twitter and a representative for West but has not received a response.
EXCLUSIVE: In a move that might well set a precedent for other A-listers, G20 star Viola Davis has become one of the first to very visibly back away from a project for the duration of the actors and writers strikes, even after the film got the SAG-AFTRA interim agreement necessary to start production.
“I love this movie, but I do not feel that it would be appropriate for this production to move forward during the strike,” said the EGOT winner in a statement obtained exclusively by Deadline. “I appreciate that the producers on the project agree with this decision. JuVee Productions and I stand in solidarity with actors, SAG/AFTRA and the WGA.”
News of the move on Davis’ part comes one a week after actor Tobias Menzies revealed to Deadline that he has joined Brad Pitt in backing away from Apex, the Formula One film that Joseph Kosinski is helming for Apple. “They’re not shooting with any SAG actors,” said Menzies, “so I’m stood down.”
It was on Friday afternoon that SAG-AFTRA shared via its website that G20 was approved for a waiver. The title that Davis was set to star in and produce secured the go-ahead from the actors guild, even given the involvement of Amazon Studios, because the project hails from the non AMPTP-affiliated MRC and will only be distributed by Amazon. Still, sources told Deadline shortly after news of the waiver emerged that it was unclear whether the project would, in fact, move forward amidst the strikes. The situation highlights some of the awkwardness and uncertainty for stars at this time who must choose if they can accept the optics of their situation. While an interim agreement for one project would put hundreds back to work, during perilous financial times for so many, choosing to use it might well result in accusations of “scabbing.”
The actors guild has handed out more than 100 interim agreements to movies and series, in total, since the SAG-AFTRA walkout this month. And they’ve become a topic of frustration for some, given confusion as to how projects from mini majors can wind up in the same company as ultra low-budget Indies. Other starry projects to have secured the agreement so far include Apple TV+’s series Tehran, New Line pickup The Watchers from Ishana Night Shyamalan, Glenn Close’s The Summer Book and A24 titles Mother Mary and Death of a Unicorn. Earlier this week, The Gray House, a Civil War spy drama series that is being produced by Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman, also secured an agreement.
An action thriller that has had The 33‘s Patricia Riggen on board to direct, G20 sees terrorists overtake the G20 Summit, with American President Taylor Sutton (Davis) then bringing all her statecraft and military experience to defend her family, her fellow leaders and the world. Noah and Logan Miller (White Boy Rick) inked the script, with revisions by Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss (The Red Lion). Producers include Andrew Lazar via Mad Chance, as well as Davis and Julius Tennon via JuVee.
Article From & Read More ( Viola Davis Steps Back From ‘G20’ Despite Pic’s SAG-AFTRA Waiver: Not “Appropriate For This Production To Move Forward During Strike” - Deadline )
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The delays come as dual union strikes disrupt the day-to-day business of Hollywood, and the SAG-AFTRA conflict makes it particularly difficult to open major fall movies without the participation of star talent. Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s anticipated Marvel outing “Kraven” is shifting to August 30, 2024, from a planned October 6 outing this year. The push to next Labor Day is vital, studio insiders said, as leading man Taylor-Johnson would need to engage in a worldwide press tour to open the visceral action project in just over two months.
“Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse,” the third film in the blockbuster Lord and Miller animated franchise, has been undated. It was meant to open March 29, 2024. Due to union’s work stoppage orders, the voice cast cannot complete dialogue recording in time for the spring opening, said a Sony source. A new date is expected in the coming weeks.
A planned sequel to “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the Paul Rudd vehicle which trapped over $200 million at the worldwide box office in 2021, has been pushed from its 2023 Christmas corridor (December 20) to Easter weekend next year (March 29, 2024).
A “Karate Kid” reboot has also been kicked from June 7, 2024, to December 13, 2024, and the Blumhouse project “They Listen,” is also now undated from a planned August 30, 2024, opening.
The studio’s date shuffle isn’t all delays. Dakota Johnson fans are getting her slice of the Spider-Man universe, “Madame Web,” on Valentine’s Day 2024 (two days earlier from its planned February 16 bow). “Venom 3” also received a release date for July 12, 2024, and “Bad Boys 4” is set for June 14, 2024.
The studio’s most imminent release is Neill Blomkamp’s “Gran Turismo,” a sports biopic starring David Harbour, Orlando Bloom and Archie Madekwe. Originally set to open wide on August 11, the Sony distribution team is betting on strong early audience testing and word-of-mouth to help the film open on track. The studio will roll out “Gran Turismo” in select theaters over the weekends of August 11 and August 18, expanding wide on August 25.
Sony’s dating game is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to strike-related delays, Variety has reported since the SAG-AFTRA conflict began three weeks ago. With productions shut down and stars benched from the promotional circuit, more majors will update releases (as is the case at Warner Bros., which Variety previously reported is considering pivoting the sci-fi epic “Dune 2” to 2024).
Article From & Read More ( ‘Beyond the Spider-Verse’ Taken Off Sony Release Calendar as Strikes Delay ‘Kraven’ and ‘Ghostbusters’ Sequel to 2024 - Variety )
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HOUSTON (AP) — Just moments before rap superstar Travis Scott took the stage at the deadly 2021 Astroworld festival, a contract worker had been so worried about what might happen after seeing people getting crushed that he texted an event organizer saying, “Someone’s going to end up dead,” according to a police report released Friday.
The texts by security contract worker Reece Wheeler were some of many examples in the nearly 1,300-page report in which festival workers highlighted problems and warned of possible deadly consequences. The report includes transcripts of concertgoers’ 911 calls and summaries of police interviews, including one with Scott conducted just days after the event.
The crowd surge at the Nov. 5, 2021, outdoor festival in Houston killed 10 attendees who ranged in age from 9 to 27. The official cause of death was compression asphyxia, which an expert likened to being crushed by a car. About 50,000 people attended the festival.
“Pull tons over the rail unconscious. There’s panic in people eyes. This could get worse quickly,” Reece Wheeler texted Shawna Boardman, one of the private security directors, at 9 p.m. Wheeler then texted, “I know they’ll try to fight through it but I would want it on the record that I didn’t advise this to continue. Someone’s going to end up dead.”
Scott’s concert began at 9:02 p.m. In their review of video from the concert’s livestream, police investigators said that at 9:13 p.m., they heard the faint sound of someone saying, “Stop the show.” The same request could also be heard at 9:16 p.m. and 9:22 p.m.
In an Aug. 19, 2022, police interview, Boardman’s attorneys told investigators that Boardman “saw things were not as bad as Reece Wheeler stated” and decided not to pass along Wheeler’s concerns to anyone else.
A grand jury declined to indict anyone who was investigated over the event, including Scott, Boardman and four other people.
During a police interview conducted two days after the concert, Scott told investigators that although he did see one person near the stage getting medical attention, overall the crowd seemed to be enjoying the show and he did not see any signs of serious problems.
“We asked if he at any point heard the crowd telling him to stop the show. He stated that if he had heard something like that he would have done something,” police said in their summary of Scott’s interview.
Hip-hop artist Drake, who performed with Scott at the concert, told police that it was difficult to see from the stage what was going on in the crowd and that he didn’t hear concertgoers’ pleas to stop the show.
Drake found out about the tragedy later that night from his manager, while learning more on social media, police said in their summary.
Marty Wallgren, who worked for a security consulting firm hired by the festival, told police that when he went backstage and tried to tell representatives for Scott and Drake that the concert needed to end because people had been hurt and might have died, he was told “Drake still has three more songs,” according to an interview summary.
Daniel Johary, a college student who got trapped in the crush of concertgoers and later used his skills working as an EMT in Israel to help an injured woman, told investigators hundreds of people had chanted for Scott to stop the music and that the chants could be heard “from everywhere.”
“He stated staff members in the area gave thumbs-up and did not care,” according to the police report.
Richard Rickeada, a retired Houston police officer who was working for a private security company at the festival, told investigators that from 8 a.m. the day of the concert, things were “pretty much in chaos,” according to a police summary of his interview. His concerns and questions about whether the concert should be held were “met with a lot of shrugged shoulders,” he said.
About 23 minutes into the concert, cameraman Gregory Hoffman radioed into the show’s production trailer to warn that “people were dying.” Hoffman was operating a large crane that held a television camera before it was overrun with concertgoers who needed medical help, police said.
The production team radioed Hoffman to ask when they could get the crane back in operation.
Salvatore Livia, who was hired to direct the live show, told police that following Hoffman’s dire warning, people in the production trailer understood that something was not right, but “they were disconnected to the reality of (what) was happening out there,” according to a police summary of Livia’s interview.
Concertgoer Christopher Gates, then 22, told police that by the second or third song in Scott’s performance, he came across about five people on the ground who he believed were already dead.
Their bodies were “lifeless, pale, and their lips were blue/purple,” according to the police report. Random people in the crowd – not medics – provided CPR.
The police report was released about a month after the grand jury in Houston declined to indict Scott on any criminal charges in connection with the deadly concert. Police Chief Troy Finner had said the report was being made public so that people could “read the entire investigation” and come to their own conclusions about the case. During a news conference after the grand jury’s decision, Finner declined to say what the overall conclusion of his agency’s investigation was or whether police should have stopped the concert sooner.
The report’s release also came the same day that Scott released his new album, “Utopia.”
More than 500 lawsuits were filed over the deaths and injuries at the concert, including many against concert promoter Live Nation and Scott. Some have since been settled.
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Movies and TV have enjoyed a fertile run of rise-and-fall business stories, from Theranos to WeWork to Chippendales. Add to that list “The Beanie Bubble,” a nostalgia-infused look back at the plush-toy craze that swept America, turned collectors into “investors” and abruptly went as flat as a doll with the stuffing knocked out of it.
Serving notice from the get-go that the Apple TV+ movie takes considerable liberties with its truth-based underpinnings (culled from a book by Zac Bissonnette), the film is told from the perspectives of three women connected to Ty Warner, the founder of the company behind Beanie Babies, played by a near-unrecognizable Zach Galifianakis (of “The Hangover” renown) in a pretty jarringly straight dramatic role.
Jumping back and forth in time in the 1980s and ’90s, that trio consists of Robbie (Elizabeth Banks), who helped Warner, then a struggling toy salesman, launch the business; Maya (Geraldine Viswanathan), whose savvy about the then-nascent Internet and auction sites like eBay helped him grow it by creating demand; and Sheila (“Succession’s” Sarah Snook), a single mom to two girls who became involved with Warner, only to see him reveal a darker side after the great lengths to which he went in wooing her.
The narrative structure actually recalls “The Bad and the Beautiful,” the classic 1952 Hollywood tale about a producer who changed the lives of three people who passed through his orbit, here with a more feminist bent. Yet all of that is steeped in the improbable rise of Beanie Babies as a must-have item – turning them into “little plush Lotto tickets” – bidding up what became a billion-dollar enterprise during the Clinton years before just as quickly going kaput.
The Clinton connection seems an especially apt point of reference, since the movie is written by Kristin Gore (“Saturday Night Live,” “Futurama”), the daughter of former Vice President Al Gore, who co-directed with her husband, musician Damian Kulash, Jr., in their feature directing debut. Gore places the story very much in that historical moment, but also wisely expands the lens to provide a not-so-subtle commentary about the enduring obsession with the Next Big Thing.
Apple TV+ recently tackled similar terrain with the movie “Tetris,” not to be confused with another project that followed a rags-to-riches-to-rags arc with roots in that era, “Blackberry.”
Despite its satirical tone, “The Beanie Bubble” largely plays things pretty straight – indeed, a little too straight, when a bit more humor and whimsy would have helped – with Galifianakis portraying Warner as the kind of self-absorbed, ruthless narcissist who’ll say anything to get what he wants (or really, needs) without necessarily possessing the savvy or discipline to hold onto it.
As noted, “The Beanie Bubble” is merely the latest addition to what’s been a boom time for such stories. When it comes to combining nostalgic pop-culture staples with the content-hungry appetites of the streaming age, that bubble, at least, has shown no signs that it’s going to burst.
“The Beanie Bubble” premieres July 28 on Apple TV+. (Disclosure: Lowry’s wife works for a division of Apple.)
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Taylor Swift’s Eras tour performances at Lumen Field in Seattle on 22 July and 23 July generated seismic activity equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake, according to seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach.
A local seismometer detected activity generated by dancing fans comparable to the famous 2011 “Beast Quake”, when Seattle Seahawks fans erupted in response to running back Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch scoring a touchdown in an NFC wild card game against the New Orleans Saints.
Swift sold out both nights in Seattle, with 72,171 fans at the Saturday show breaking a venue record of 70,000 set by U2 in 2011. Swift’s Eras Tour is one of the most expensive ever, costing an estimated $100m or more.
Concerts have been known on occasion to register seismic activity, such as a 2011 Foo Fighters concert in New Zealand attended by 50,000 fans and a 2022 Garth Brooks concert at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. But seismic magnitudes on the Richter scale were not provided from those concerts.
Caplan-Auerbach, a geology professor at Western Washington University, told CNN she saw the Swift comparison in a Pacific north-west earthquake group she moderates, so compared seismic data from both concerts and the 2011 NFL event.
“I grabbed the data from both nights of the concert and quickly noticed they were clearly the same pattern of signals,” she told CNN. “If I overlay them on top of each other, they’re nearly identical.”
She noted the difference between the NFL event and the Swifties dancing was just 0.3, but said the Swift fans still beat out Beast Quake.
“The shaking was twice as strong as ‘Beast Quake’. It absolutely doubled it,” she said.
The earth-shaking cheer after the Seahawks touchdown lasted for just a moment, Caplan-Auerbach said, while the dancing and cheering at the concert, and music from both nights, comprised of around 10 hours of data, massive energy driven into the ground, generating the seismic activity.
Swift’s Seattle concerts came toward the end of the US leg of the Eras Tour, her first in five years. Shows in California are lined up next, with the international part of the tour beginning on 24 August in Mexico City.
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Netflix is hiring an AI product manager with a salary range of up to $900,000 to boost the company’s internal use of artificial intelligence.
The posting, which was initially discovered by The Intercept, states that the successful applicant will receive a salary of $300,000 to $900,000 and will be based at Netflix’s Los Gatos, California, headquarters or remotely on the west coast.
The job listing comes as the Writer’s Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, are on strike.
One of the concerns both labor union groups voiced was the use of machine learning in television and film production.
It is unclear whether or not this role will be directly involved with or impact content creation. Netflix already uses AI to customize user experience, such as selecting the thumbnail art or curating users recommendations based on their specific tastes.
The company also uses AI in data analytics to determine which programs are successful.
Netflix declined to comment on the product manager role advertised on their website.
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A British jury on Wednesday found the actor not guilty of nine charges.
A jury in London deliberated for more than 12 hours, and ultimately cleared the actor of nine charges.Susannah Ireland/Reuters
Kevin Spacey, the two-time Oscar-winning actor known for his movie and TV roles including “House of Cards,” was on Wednesday found not guilty by a jury in Britain of nine counts of sexual assault.
Almost six years after allegations of inappropriate behavior began to emerge against Mr. Spacey on both sides of the Atlantic, a jury at Southwark Crown Court in London took just over 12 hours to reach its decision.
As the verdicts were announced, Mr. Spacey, 64, stood in a transparent box in the middle of the courtroom, wearing a dark blue suit and looking unemotional as he faced the jury.
But when the final “not guilty” was read out, the actor, whose birthday falls on Wednesday, began to cry and sighed heavily with relief.
Shortly after the verdict, Mr. Spacey walked out of the courthouse — shaking the hands of several jurors on the way and kissing two security guards on the cheek — and gave a brief statement to a throng of waiting reporters.
“I imagine that many of you can understand that there’s a lot for me to process,” he said. “I’m enormously grateful to the jury for having taken the time to examine all of the evidence.”
“I am humbled by the outcome,” he added, before getting into a taxi.
During the almost monthlong trial in London, the court heard from four men who said that Mr. Spacey assaulted them between 2001 and 2013. For most of that time, the actor was the artistic director of the Old Vic theater, a major London playhouse.
One complainant told the British police that Mr. Spacey touched him multiple times without his consent. The complainant described incidents included once in either 2004 or 2005 when he said the actor grabbed his genitals so hard that he almost veered off the road as they were heading to Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara Ball.
During the trial, Mr. Spacey — who appeared under his full name, Kevin Spacey Fowler — said that the pair had a consensual “naughty relationship.” The actor added that he felt “crushed” by the complainant’s characterization of their encounters. Elton John, giving evidence for Mr. Spacey’s defense, said that Mr. Spacey only attended his ball once, in 2001, several years before the complainant said he was groped.
Another complainant said that he wrote to Mr. Spacey hoping that the actor would mentor him, and eventually went for a drink at Mr. Spacey’s London home. That complainant said that he fell asleep in the apartment, and later woke up to discover Mr. Spacey on his knees, performing oral sex on him. Mr. Spacey said during the trial that the pair had consensual oral sex, then the man “hurriedly left,” as if he regretted the encounter.
On July 20, Patrick Gibbs, Mr. Spacey’s legal representative, claimed that three of the complainants were lying and only made their accusations in the hope of financial gain. Mr. Spacey’s promiscuous lifestyle made him “quite an easy target” for false allegations, Mr. Gibbs added.
The trial in London was the latest that Mr. Spacey has successfully defended. In 2022, a federal jury in Manhattan found Mr. Spacey not liable for battery after the actor Anthony Rapp filed a lawsuit accusing Mr. Spacey of climbing on top of him and making a sexual advance in 1986, when Mr. Rapp was 14.
But what Wednesday’s verdict will mean for Mr. Spacey’s career was not immediately clear. In June, Mr. Spacey said in an interview with Zeit Magazin, a German magazine, that he intended to return to acting after the trial. “I know that there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges,” he said.
The ongoing actors and writers strikes are creating a paradox for major studios and streamers, one that will become more apparent over the coming months, when each company reports quarterly earnings. As the impasse wreaks havoc on the entertainment economy, the companies that SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America are striking against will see their cash flows rise and their profit margins (or losses) improve.
It makes sense, after all: With the vast majority of film and TV sets shut down, the companies are keeping cash in their treasuries that normally would be funding those productions. And with Wall Street analyst firm MoffettNathanson estimating that total media industry content spend in 2022 was nearly $135 billion, there’s going to be a lot of cash sitting idle.
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“In the short term, every media company will benefit from preserving cash and right-sizing talent deals,” MoffettNathanson’s Luke Landis wrote in a May 3 report. “Longer term the strike could cement the pendulum swing away from Peak TV to its antithesis: An age defined by a dearth of English-language-scripted content rather than a glut.”
Illustration By Eric Yahnker
In fact, the impact of the strikes on corporate balance sheets already was visible when Netflix reported its quarterly earnings July 19. The company had previously told investors that it expected 2023 free cash flow to be about $3.5 billion. Thanks in part to the strikes, it raised that figure to more than $5 billion.
“If the strikes are extended, there is likely further upside in ’23 FCF,” Morgan Stanley analyst Ben Swinburne wrote July 19. “This is not necessarily good news, as Netflix is in the business of producing TV shows and films. If the strike lasts for an extended period of time, 2024’s slate will be impacted even if it is relatively better off versus the competition.”
For other companies, like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and NBCUniversal — which have spent billions in pursuit of streaming hits but so far have come up short — near-term cash boosts could nudge them closer to profitability, even if that quarterly improvement is just a mirage, with the long-term impact of the strikes on the content pipeline not to be felt until next year.
And to be clear: the strikes, if they continue on much longer, will be very bad for the entertainment giants. “The consequences of a very long strike could prove bothersome and even dire, under certain circumstances, for the many media companies along the food chain that rely on the entertainment content studios produce and that have minimal diversity, minimal sports rights and news programming, or lack adequate replacement content and financial flexibility,” Moody’s senior vp Neil Begley wrote in a July 17 report.
Take Netflix’s latest earnings report, in which the guidance on free cash flow was accompanied by co-CEO Ted Sarandos telling analysts about growing up in a union household and his desire to cut a fair deal with the guilds. Netflix’s focus is on “creating a steady drumbeat of must-watch shows and movies” for its users. If that drumbeat slows, or stops altogether, there will be consequences for Netflix and any other company that relies on a steady stream of content for growth.
And for the owners of broadcast and some cable networks, the economic pain will be felt sooner, as fall schedules get impacted by a lack of scripted programming. That in turn will cause more pain in an already strained advertising market.
NBCU, for example, says that it closed its upfront deals the week of July 17 with cash commitments “in line with last year,” driven largely by sports and tentpole events. But if its entire schedule is impacted (or even its planned 50th-anniversary celebration for Saturday Night Live, which NBCU says more than 30 advertisers have already inquired about), the strikes’ pain will far outstrip the gains. “With actors and writers both striking for the first time since 1960 and an approaching broadcast season, we believe profitability could be impaired in 2H23 due to lower advertising,” JPMorgan’s Phil Cusick wrote in a July 18 note.
In other words, for companies that own broadcast networks, those short-term gains may be very short term indeed.
As was the case during the COVID-19 shutdowns in 2020, many of these companies will find themselves with extra cash, raising the question: What do they do with it? The simplest answer would actually be a repeat of the 2020 shutdowns: Hoard it.
In the early weeks of the pandemic, companies desperately sought to shore up their cash reserves, unsure of how their businesses would be impacted. The concern isn’t the same in 2023, but there is one key similarity: Once the strikes are over, the productions will resume, and fast.
While companies may look to exit some projects or deals in search of long-term cash savings, they also will be going from a dead stop to a sprint when it comes to restarting films and series halted by the strikes.
“In Q3 and then further in Q4, we hope to start ticking up our cash spend on content again and doing it in a healthy way,” Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann told analysts on the company’s earnings call, adding that the disruptions will create “some lumpiness” in the company’s content spend. “So we think we’ve got a lot more we can spend into a big opportunity, but we want to do it responsibly.”
If the picketing drags on, companies may look to put their cash to use in other types of content, perhaps reality or unscripted shows or international productions not impacted by the strikes.
But there are other options. A big one is returning cash to shareholders via dividends or stock buybacks. Disney already has said that it hopes to bring back its dividend by the end of 2023 after eliminating it during the pandemic, and Netflix recently told shareholders that it expects “to increase our stock repurchase activity in the second half of 2023,” citing its excess cash.
Of course, there’s also the M&A question. While high interest rates and an aggressive FTC and Department of Justice could pose issues for megadeals, there is still an appetite for dealmaking. Just look at the feverish speculation over selling off Disney’s linear TV businesses, including ABC, following Bob Iger’s declaration that they “may not be core” to the company. Or Lionsgate, which is splitting its studio business and Starz business later this year, potentially making each ripe for acquisition.
And with its cash hoard only growing, and a relative dearth of legacy IP to build off of, Netflix is frequently cited as a possible buyer of assets. “Some of those assets are stressed for a reason,” Sarandos said when asked if any troubled entertainment companies could be an acquisition target for Netflix. “But if there are opportunities that give us access to pools of IP that we could develop into and against that could be super interesting.”
The future may include lower overall spending on content as the irrational exuberance of content spend in search of a profitable streaming business.
For the major Hollywood players, the need to balance that uncertainty with what is likely to be some extra cash is a difficult equation to solve. Every entity except the already consistently profitable Netflix wants to make gains, but it needs to be sustainable: Short-term profit in favor of long-term pain won’t cut it. The actors and writers will make up a piece of that puzzle and likely will get more than they had previously, though if content spending falls overall, the strikes may very well be the death knell of peak content.
A version of this story first appeared in the July 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Barbie is a box-office success and has been receiving positive reviews for its diversity, inclusion and positive message. However, certain political circles have taken aim at the Greta Gerwig-directed film and the director is giving her take on the backlash.
“Certainly, there’s a lot of passion,” Gerwig told The New York Times about the negativity from the political right-wing. “My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men.”
She added, “I hope that in all of that passion, if they see it or engage with it, it can give them some of the relief that it gave other people.”
Gerwig also opened up about casting Ryan Gosling to play Ken opposite Margot Robbie. The filmmaker said she saw Gosling in a Saturday Night Live sketch that gave her all the Kenergy to have the actor portray “Beach Ken.”
“You know those actors you can… just sort of feel that they know what’s funny, and I always felt that about him,” Gerwig said during an appearance on the SmartLess podcast. “And then I’m a big fan of all of his SNLs, I always thought he was great on SNL… He did ‘Guy That Just Got a Boat’ on ‘Weekend Update,’ and it’s so good.”
Gerwig was referencing Gosling’s appearance in 2017 when he played “Guy Who Just Joined Soho House” alongside Alex Moffat as “Guy Who Just Bought a Boat” during SNL’s “Weekend Update” segment.
Gerwig revealed that she wrote the Ken part with Gosling in mind adding, “We wrote his name into the script and everything… and [Gosling’s name] was everywhere. And then when we handed them the script, the studio was like ‘Oh, it’s so wonderful that you know Ryan.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know Ryan. I’ve never met Ryan, I have no idea.'”
Article From & Read More ( ‘Barbie’ Director Greta Gerwig On Backlash From The Political Right-Wing & The Ryan Gosling ‘SNL’ Sketch That Gave Her Kenergy - Deadline )
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Entertainment
He’ll still joke about fast food. But on “Dark Pale,” his 10th stand-up special, his evolution as a comedian is apparent.
Have we gotten Jim Gaffigan wrong all along?
A Midwestern-born father of five, Gaffigan is known for clean, family-friendly stand-up on the most inoffensive subjects (kids, food). He’s safe enough to open for the Pope and regularly grouse on “CBS Sunday Morning.” But his consistently funny new special “Dark Pale,” his 10th, pushes against that vanilla image. The pandemic, he tells us, has made him question mortality, and in one wonderfully macabre bit, Gaffigan, dressed in a black suit and shirt, imagines his own funeral. He wants an open casket, with him sitting up, crumbs on his shirt, arms occasionally rising like a marionette while a recording of him says, “Don’t worry, I’m in a better place” before adding, “Just kidding. I’m here.”
It’s an unexpectedly creepy visual, and after telling you about cremation, Gaffigan adopts his signature second voice, a gravelly whisper that operates like a critic in the crowd, asking: “When is he going to do the food jokes?”
It’s easy to miss if you aren’t a fan, but Jim Gaffigan has been on a roll. Already prolific, he’s become more so, putting out five specials in six years, with this new one on Prime Video the best of the bunch. Instead of resting on his laurels, he’s getting more ambitious. There are still jokes about chain restaurants (he calls Starbucks “an upscale unemployment office”). But the bristling tone and intricacy of the jokes demand attention, if not revaluation. He’s telling us in the title (his third using the word “Pale”) that he’s got heavier things on his mind than fast food. After revisiting his deep trove of material released over the past couple decades, what’s clear is that he always did.
Gaffigan’s patient delivery was there from the start, but his early albums might surprise those who only know his famous persona. He cursed, talked about sex and came off more as an annoyed son than a grumpy family man. In a 2015 interview with Marc Maron, Gaffigan said his earliest acting experience was pretending to be happy when his dad came home. This hints at his most fertile theme: The endless American capacity for denial.
His tone had shifted by 2006, when he had his first special, “Beyond the Pale,” which included his signature bit complaining about Hot Pockets. This set the course for a career of food jokes, with so many of them about how the cheap pleasures of eating fast food overpower our knowledge that it’s bad for us. At its best, like his bit about McDonald’s (“Momentary pleasure followed by incredible guilt eventually leading to cancer”) he broadens his sights to make points about our disposable culture. When he applies his comic eye to hotels or hospitals, he sees the lengths we go to to ignore how the towels were used by thousands of strangers and the gowns worn by the countless deceased.
Gaffigan, now 57, can seem like Jerry Seinfeld (the pair are actually touring together this fall) in his sticky phrase-making — an elevator is a “casket on a string” — and the ordinariness of his subject matter. His focus on single subjects can be knowingly, preposterously long. Who else does 10 minutes on horses? There’s an element of showing off — look at how I can make foliage funny — but also the excessiveness, the stubborn commitment of it, gets its own laughs. Gaffigan’s comedy has always been meta. His new special starts with a moody nighttime landscape that pans back to reveal itself as being inside a picture frame.
He constantly interrupts his jokes to comment on them and plays with expectations through formal trickery. (In a stunt that could have shown up in an early Steve Martin bit, he had a piano onstage for his last special so he could fool us into thinking he could play it.) Another common move is saying he’s pandering before doing the opposite. My favorite of this genre is when he told the crowd in his reasonable moseying tone that he was salt of the earth before stating: “I just want a regular old private jet.”
Along with food, Gaffigan’s most consistent subject is religion. “Dark Pale” features an impression of a peevish, cocooned God shouting at his beleaguered assistant that his messages of climate disasters were not getting through (“I miss the days when you could send a plague and people would listen”). He sprinkles jokes about the Bible or Jesus into his specials. What he doesn’t do is organize them into a thematic, coherent hour, as if he’s making a grand statement. Gaffigan’s old-school act is allergic to anything that might seem pretentious, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t challenge himself. He plays with form by taking conventional bits that unravel into nonsense instead of building to a punchline and even turned his wife’s cancer diagnoses into material.
His new work reveals his move into more storytelling, elaborate act-outs and jokes built on deceptions (“My parents aren’t vaccinated. They’ve been dead for decades, but enough with the excuses!”). He’s also become slightly more political in the Trump era, even letting loose an uncharacteristic rant on social media addressing Trump supporters: “I’m sure you enjoy pissing people off, but you know Trump is a liar and a criminal.” His jokes make the point with a lighter touch, poking fun at how quickly we moved from panic to indifference over Covid. Gaffigan now performs the kind of interweaving jokes that only a seasoned comic could pull off. In his new special, he does bits about Starbucks, bells and diarrhea and then quilts them together. These are less like standard comic callbacks than variations on a theme. It’s the work of a pro.
The only time you see Gaffigan strain is in his personal material. When he moves into stories about his childhood in the second half of the special, you wish he had a director to draw him out. Then again, his buried anger is such a source of his comedy that you wouldn’t want him to go too deep.
In some ways, Gaffigan’s work gives you a better picture of the country than it does of himself. His comedy, rooted in a performance of buffoonish arrogance, is quintessentially American, a mixture of cynicism and innocence, cheerful salesmanship with an undercurrent of despair. Exploiting his wholesome image, he reserves his fiercest and most ridiculous anger for classic but mundane Americana. Last special, he raged against marching bands; This time it’s hot air balloons. If Gaffigan was a musical, he’s be a high-concept revival of “The Music Man” that teases out its bleaker themes.
In one bit that really resonates from this latest special, he considers a recent plane crash. He tells us that it took three minutes from nosedive to impact. In a minimum of words for maximum impact, Gaffigan places us inside the ill-fated aircraft, imitating the passengers screaming and screaming before pausing to wonder whether they could actually keep it up.
“Three minutes is a long time,” he said, his voice turning from yells to croaks to quiet. “You know someone on the flight rang the flight attendant button.” Then he impersonated a woman asking for a free drink before plummeting to her doom.
It’s a nice metaphor for how Americans handle crises. We scream for only so long, then we find ways to move on. Is this delusion or realism? Probably both.
He’ll still joke about fast food. But on “Dark Pale,” his 10th stand-up special, his evolution as a comedian is apparent.
Have we gotten Jim Gaffigan wrong all along?
A Midwestern-born father of five, Gaffigan is known for clean, family-friendly stand-up on the most inoffensive subjects (kids, food). He’s safe enough to open for the Pope and regularly grouse on “CBS Sunday Morning.” But his consistently funny new special “Dark Pale,” his 10th, pushes against that vanilla image. The pandemic, he tells us, has made him question mortality, and in one wonderfully macabre bit, Gaffigan, dressed in a black suit and shirt, imagines his own funeral. He wants an open casket, with him sitting up, crumbs on his shirt, arms occasionally rising like a marionette while a recording of him says, “Don’t worry, I’m in a better place” before adding, “Just kidding. I’m here.”
It’s an unexpectedly creepy visual, and after telling you about cremation, Gaffigan adopts his signature second voice, a gravelly whisper that operates like a critic in the crowd, asking: “When is he going to do the food jokes?”
It’s easy to miss if you aren’t a fan, but Jim Gaffigan has been on a roll. Already prolific, he’s become more so, putting out five specials in six years, with this new one on Prime Video the best of the bunch. Instead of resting on his laurels, he’s getting more ambitious. There are still jokes about chain restaurants (he calls Starbucks “an upscale unemployment office”). But the bristling tone and intricacy of the jokes demand attention, if not revaluation. He’s telling us in the title (his third using the word “Pale”) that he’s got heavier things on his mind than fast food. After revisiting his deep trove of material released over the past couple decades, what’s clear is that he always did.
Gaffigan’s patient delivery was there from the start, but his early albums might surprise those who only know his famous persona. He cursed, talked about sex and came off more as an annoyed son than a grumpy family man. In a 2015 interview with Marc Maron, Gaffigan said his earliest acting experience was pretending to be happy when his dad came home. This hints at his most fertile theme: The endless American capacity for denial.
His tone had shifted by 2006, when he had his first special, “Beyond the Pale,” which included his signature bit complaining about Hot Pockets. This set the course for a career of food jokes, with so many of them about how the cheap pleasures of eating fast food overpower our knowledge that it’s bad for us. At its best, like his bit about McDonald’s (“Momentary pleasure followed by incredible guilt eventually leading to cancer”) he broadens his sights to make points about our disposable culture. When he applies his comic eye to hotels or hospitals, he sees the lengths we go to to ignore how the towels were used by thousands of strangers and the gowns worn by the countless deceased.
Gaffigan, now 57, can seem like Jerry Seinfeld (the pair are actually touring together this fall) in his sticky phrase-making — an elevator is a “casket on a string” — and the ordinariness of his subject matter. His focus on single subjects can be knowingly, preposterously long. Who else does 10 minutes on horses? There’s an element of showing off — look at how I can make foliage funny — but also the excessiveness, the stubborn commitment of it, gets its own laughs. Gaffigan’s comedy has always been meta. His new special starts with a moody nighttime landscape that pans back to reveal itself as being inside a picture frame.
He constantly interrupts his jokes to comment on them and plays with expectations through formal trickery. (In a stunt that could have shown up in an early Steve Martin bit, he had a piano onstage for his last special so he could fool us into thinking he could play it.) Another common move is saying he’s pandering before doing the opposite. My favorite of this genre is when he told the crowd in his reasonable moseying tone that he was salt of the earth before stating: “I just want a regular old private jet.”
Along with food, Gaffigan’s most consistent subject is religion. “Dark Pale” features an impression of a peevish, cocooned God shouting at his beleaguered assistant that his messages of climate disasters were not getting through (“I miss the days when you could send a plague and people would listen”). He sprinkles jokes about the Bible or Jesus into his specials. What he doesn’t do is organize them into a thematic, coherent hour, as if he’s making a grand statement. Gaffigan’s old-school act is allergic to anything that might seem pretentious, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t challenge himself. He plays with form by taking conventional bits that unravel into nonsense instead of building to a punchline and even turned his wife’s cancer diagnoses into material.
His new work reveals his move into more storytelling, elaborate act-outs and jokes built on deceptions (“My parents aren’t vaccinated. They’ve been dead for decades, but enough with the excuses!”). He’s also become slightly more political in the Trump era, even letting loose an uncharacteristic rant on social media addressing Trump supporters: “I’m sure you enjoy pissing people off, but you know Trump is a liar and a criminal.” His jokes make the point with a lighter touch, poking fun at how quickly we moved from panic to indifference over Covid. Gaffigan now performs the kind of interweaving jokes that only a seasoned comic could pull off. In his new special, he does bits about Starbucks, bells and diarrhea and then quilts them together. These are less like standard comic callbacks than variations on a theme. It’s the work of a pro.
The only time you see Gaffigan strain is in his personal material. When he moves into stories about his childhood in the second half of the special, you wish he had a director to draw him out. Then again, his buried anger is such a source of his comedy that you wouldn’t want him to go too deep.
In some ways, Gaffigan’s work gives you a better picture of the country than it does of himself. His comedy, rooted in a performance of buffoonish arrogance, is quintessentially American, a mixture of cynicism and innocence, cheerful salesmanship with an undercurrent of despair. Exploiting his wholesome image, he reserves his fiercest and most ridiculous anger for classic but mundane Americana. Last special, he raged against marching bands; This time it’s hot air balloons. If Gaffigan was a musical, he’s be a high-concept revival of “The Music Man” that teases out its bleaker themes.
In one bit that really resonates from this latest special, he considers a recent plane crash. He tells us that it took three minutes from nosedive to impact. In a minimum of words for maximum impact, Gaffigan places us inside the ill-fated aircraft, imitating the passengers screaming and screaming before pausing to wonder whether they could actually keep it up.
“Three minutes is a long time,” he said, his voice turning from yells to croaks to quiet. “You know someone on the flight rang the flight attendant button.” Then he impersonated a woman asking for a free drink before plummeting to her doom.
It’s a nice metaphor for how Americans handle crises. We scream for only so long, then we find ways to move on. Is this delusion or realism? Probably both.
MARCH 2022
